Here’s the article that has the hockey world talking today. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/08/01/nhl-dallas-stars-texas-youth-hockey-monopoly/84289184007/
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42 Comments
I really hope a Houston team doesn’t do this because hockey in Texas will be choked out like this.
what jersey is that. i need it
If Stars are smart, and want to grow the game they need to help fund pay to play for people who cannot afford. Or promote a cheaper alternative like roller hockey, and hope it translates.
Fact. Ice is expensive everywhere. Fact. Texas. Fact. Hockey is expensive.
FB fields are also expensive. Grass fields are big, require maintenance. The taxpayers usually fund those through township recreation divisions, and or public schools. Texas, and probably Dallas especially has some nice nice FB fields. Same goes for Baseball fields. They are just as big as FB fields
If the Stars are smart, the shareholders will form separate company from Stars to buy up rinks and run them. That way not associated with the Stars brand. In fact each rink these owners buy should be a separate business entity from each other.
Nashville…….
American culture on full display,
its not really the dallas stars hockey team, its the marketing and business teams. hope the team doesnt get flack for something they cant controll
Hey this is Texas where everything is big, including corruption.
I hoping to get my kids into hockey here in Lexington Kentucky. I've looked into it but I wouldn't know what's expensive and what isnt?! Anyone have any advice for beginner players? 4yr old twins. Beginning skating this season. Hockey begins next winter season. Equipment, lessons and such? Thanks!!
The most important thing one needs to get to the NHL is to be somewhat affiliated with a player that made it. Or be rich enough to be buying jerseys or tournaments or sponsoring a team.
The Star's rules and issues are no different than Canadian minor hockey politics.
I live just above the official poverty line as a family man. I put my daughters through music, dance, sports, notably competitive swimming, even though we didn't have the money. We made do untul 2015, then it got way, way more expensive, but we soldiered on. It ain't just a hockey thing.
I dont believe "ice" being pricey has to do with the very base costs of it. Think about it. It is just water, refrigeration, plumbing, electrical and insulated structure protecting it. And of course size for parking, the rink itself and seating. What else has that, and is being built all the time all over the place? Costco, Super Walmarts and regular Supermarkets are such things that fit that description. Those three examples are in fact over saturating the US with their presence. Yet these businesses are also able to price themselves accordingly to most people's budget. Otherwise we have a famine going on.
What puts the price over the top of many families is the speculation that goes on in the industry. Rink owners want to make as much as they can or else wont take out the loan and put themselves into debt. The coaches will only coach if it is worth their time. The rink maintenance and front office can be minimum wage though. It will probably be the teens that play at the rink. If they work at the rink, they can get discounts for playing. In fact some of the Adult men's league players can even volunteer to coach youth for discounts on men's league registration.
This yells once again hockey is for the rich and elite. Ugh
The Dallas Stars just demonetized Shannon.😂😂😂
Hee in Denver, the Colorado Avalanche definitely support youth hockey with the mini-mite program that provides free equipment to young players with some skating lessons as well. They have ice at a local public rink for their practices and training camp, but other than that have little relationship with the kids leagues as far as I know. We are lucky to have about 20 sheets of ice in the Metro area. But it’s still not enough!
My parents payed for 5 years of travel for me and struggled financially the whole time. Even thought I was more of a enforcer than a playmaker, they still always did it for me. Nowadays im worried I wont be able to do the same for my kids the way the US economy is headed. Best of luck to you parents out there!
I can attest to lesson costs ballooning. My parents were paying 75/hr for one of the better goalie coaches around for my brother's 1 on 1 lessons. Perhaps a bit much, but totally worth the value considering how much it helped his game – especially since he'd come and watch some games and give some in-game instruction for free when he didn't have to. Great guy. Overnight the prices went to 200/hr. That extra 125 was literally just the cut to the Stars org. Bro didn't get many lessons after that.
Dude. Please take what's left of the summer and enjoy it with your wife and pets. I mean serious….youth hockey?? What's next – covering lame women's hockey news????????????????????
$22 for stick and puck is outrageous. Farmers branch star center used to be $15 for both stick and puck and drop in
Live in Dallas and have friends that kids don't play any longer because of the cost. It's just another reason to hate the Stars
Also to add to my earlier comment about FB and BB, and BaseBall being funded in US by taxpayers, the funding has actually gotten so out of hand. Some underprivileged townships/communities actually cannot afford to fund their own sports programs let alone their own school systems. So the burden actually falls on the middle classes and above. Which means it just costing them more money. It be cheaper to not fund any sports programs for those communities at all. The funds can be used to hire more teachers, and focus on academics. As long as the children in these underprivileged areas have recess, and PE class they should be fine.
But no instead of saving everyone money, these underprivileged kids are getting top notch coaching and good enough facilities, and playing in strong enough leagues to make it to the pros. All thanks to the middle class and above, which is not a burden any of them asked to bare.
The worst aspect of this, is many of these underprivileged kids have behavioral issues. Letting them play sports is just spoiling them further. They take the bad attitudes with them to college, into the pros, and then into retirement. There are so many examples of thuggery in the NCAA, the NFL, and beyond I cannot list all of them on the comments sections. But you can look them up. Basically taxpayers are paying for arseholes to live their dreams, and continue acting like arseholes. No accountability, no karma, no need for self reflection, and no need to contribute positively to society.
The elephant in the room is that youth hockey in Canada is now pretty much just an exclusive game of the elite and the rich parents. It is becoming increasingly rare to see amateur youths getting drafted into that NHL that didn't come from rich families that sent their kids into the rich hockey academy hockey path. Also, Canada being flooded with immigrants from countries that have no interest in hockey, and those immigrants not taking up an interest in the game when they get here is systematically leading to the demise of youth hockey. I don't know a single parent in our neighborhood who has their kid in ice hockey anymore. It's all soccer, and gymnastics that the kids here participate in.
Businesspeople doing business things. People like to trot out the canard of "growing the game" whenever talking about non-traditional markets like these as though owners aren't going to act the same way businesspeople act in any other given situation.
Atlanta had practically no rinks, team-owned or otherwise, and when the Thrashers moved, plenty of advocates wished they'd been like the Dallas Stars.
I can only imagine how expensive it is to have a kid playing hockey these days –my parents thought it was expensive back in the '70's because I was a goalie
The Dallas Professional Ice Hockey Team. Taking away magic from hockey and screwing the fans since 1967. Im from minnesota so I will never call them by their team name. Buckle up Metroplex Tom GREEDlardi will demand a billion dollars in tax money to build a new arena in the next decade.
Blue Jackets own most of the rinks in central Ohio and haven't heard rumblings of them exerting control over teams and such
I am an adult aged stars fan, would love to learn how to skate but find myself unable to afford it. I couldnt imagine trying to pay to put a kid in the sport!
DFW native here. My 6yo son went through the Stars Little Rookies program this last year and the free 5-week program was incredible with a fully monogrammed Stars kit that blew us away. You could keep all the gear including the nice duffel bag for $250 after the program ended which is cheaper than piecing together a full get-up off amazon from what I could tell (still a steep buy-in compared to a soccer ball and gym shorts) but any follow up programs were exorbitantly expensive. My son liked skating, but wasn't really driven to keep going so staring down the barrel at something like $600 to keep the pads and book a few months of lessons was a non-starter.
Definitely feels like hockey in the US, much like a baseball or golf in some respects, is a wealthy kid's game.
texas youth sports culture is vile and this is a symptom of it. no sports from ages 6-22 can be for fun, everything is competitive
How they treat the men’s league is abysmal too. There’s nothing you can do when they own all the ice. I played travel inline hockey growing up because I couldn’t afford ice and which has even less full time indoor rinks but there was none of this. After joining men’s leagues in my 20s and dealing with the stars rinks leadership and their pompous douchbag attitudes Im glad that’s not the environment I dealt with for my 10+ years playing as a kid. The old saying, absolute power corrupts absolutely couldn’t be truer with the toxic leadership and way they treat customers paying them thousands a year on the low end. Travel ice was $20k when I was young so probably double the costs now and there’s zero appreciation for their bell cow customers. These non profit orgs and clubs do so much of the work that the rinks profit from too in terms of what makes these clubs successful it’s disgusting they’re treated this way and the Stars org should be ashamed.
I actually interned for the Dallas Stars Elite 19U girls team from 2019-21. Worked with Mike Salekin. Everyone a part of the 19U club was great, but looking back at it, some things that seemed a bit off with DSE as a whole seem a little clearer now.
This would be another example of social engineering. Ice hockey is in the "luxury aisle" section of sports, no doubt. I have a hard time believing many working class hockey families exist in the U.S. South. Another part of Gary Bettman's fiasco of a vision.
The Mafia Stars of Dallas… I already disliked that organisation. NHL should investigate and pressure those people out
gee sounds like mini trumps running the Dallas rink network
The NHL can't even keep up with MLS at this point. Gary Bettman's NHL has been a disaster. Ice hockey is a niche market sport. When are people going to learn?
Well I think it’s been a pretty common problem since organized hockey began.
In the Ottawa area in the late 80’s and early 90’s it was already 1500k per year before gas and tournaments and hotels and food.
That was buying new skates, and a few sticks every year and used other stuff.
It’s like 3-4K now.
This is house league in Canada.
It’s quite uncommon for someone from a lower income home to become quite successful these days in hockey.
The parents dedication is huge like Shannon says but money is the driver.
How is an NHL team getting into private Facebook pages? It looks worse when they are spying on opposition. Our local year round rink had to spend 85 to 100 thousand on insulation in Montana. It is pricey but still an hour and a half of ice time can be only ten dollars. That is affordable in this world. Maybe it needs to go to non-profit arena.
The entire sport in America is completely inaccessible and that’s exactly why it sits comfortably in like 7th place amongst American spectator sports. Playing AA hockey in Maryland like 15 years ago costed 1,000 dollars I can only imagine what it is now.
me and my friend have to sneak into every stick and puck since they raised the price to 22$ per hour. also my old league got removed and we had to join a dallas stars league which costs an extra 200$
Idk as someone who loves the stars and has family playing in the clubs beneath them… the rinks are very well run and, while expensive at times, we’ve never had issues. Just my experience. I think a lot of this is out of the stars organizations hands. They can’t eat all the costs
Hockey is expensive.