Abstract
Recent research has observed significant effects of a community's population density on the production of elite athletes (Rossing et al., 2015; Hancock et al., 2017). A community's proximity to local high performance developmental sport clubs may also favorably expose youth athletes to scouting, resources, and socio-cultural environments that promote athlete development (Curtis & Birch, 1987; Balish & Côté, 2014). However, the effects of population density and proximity to developmental sport clubs on developing National Hockey League (NHL) draftees has yet to be explored. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the number of NHL draftees produced and city/town population density as well as proximity to Canadian Hockey League (CHL) teams in Canadian born hockey players (from all provinces) drafted into the NHL between 2000-2014 (N = 1502). Linear regression analyses showed a significant positive relationship between population density and the production of draftees in all provincial regions (R2 range: 0.019 to 0.229; standardized ?-coefficients range: 0.142 to 0.480). A significant negative relationship between distance to CHL teams and NHL draftee production was observed in 4/6 provincial regions (R2 range: 0.004 to 0.022; standardized ?-coefficients range: -0.066 to -1.570); cities closer to CHL teams produced more athletes. Future research may benefit from exploring the influence of these two variables with respect to inconsistencies in the relationship between a region's population size (i.e., community size effect) and the production of elite athletes (e.g., Baker et al., 2009; Farah et al., 2016).
