According to NHL Database & Central Scouting, since 1948 the latest age any player started playing organized hockey who then went on to play in the NHL was age 11. Kelly Hrudey & Curtis Joseph started at that age. Johan Franzen is listed at 14 however he says he started playing organized hockey at 11, the team he'd played for in an outlier league of some sort. Ed Jovanovski didnt start until 11, and didnt start playing for an elite Travel Team in the States until 15 which is considered pretty late.
Well, I've seen the reference to Yvon Lambert from multiple sources.This one says he learnt to skate at 14.
I 2nd this
My neighbor's kids play for the Jr. Sharks and I go out and skate with them every now and again at Sharks Ice. They are 12 and 15 and are absolutely lights out. I'm a good 10/15 yrs older and can body them out, but I have to catch the little fu***** first which gets harder to do every damn day.
False.
He quit for a year or two in grade 8 or 9 I think.
Yvon Lambert started to skate when he was Bantam age(14-15):
http://www.yvonlambert.ca/biographie.htm
write-up is in French but the claim is in the first paragraph.also Bantam varied in some regions of Quebec in the sixties, (13-14, with 12 year olds at times)
Didn't Ovechkin not start until he was 8?
Not that old, but I think most guys started at least skating at like 4 or 5.
Ville Leino started when he was 17. Pretty darn impressive, if you ask me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ville_Leino
Didn't Larry Robinson start organized hockey relatively late as well?
Joe Mullen had an interesting start, and when i read up on him on Wikipedia he could have started as late as 14, but maybe someone can elaborate around that. Not younger then 10 in any case.
Ya, I didnt just blindly post the aforementioned, the source's used a few years old. I was actually surprised to read it, as Im sure there simply must be a few players who didnt get going until later. Consider as well some of the US born players who may have started at 8, 10 or 12 playing road or even roller hockey, possibly no access to arenas' or leagues until age 14 or so, and who then went on to have productive pro careers. Europe as well, along with the old Soviet Block countries. I wonder at what age any number of those players started playing in organized leagues....
Didn't Larry Robinson start organized hockey relatively late as well?
One thing to be sure is that is was more possible the farther one goes back in time and less likely, enforcers aside, once the European explosion hit full force say in the early 90's till today.
As a coach we talk about the "Golden Years" of learning motoric skills as the years right before puberty. If you start during/before this period you should have a good chance to learn to skate well. The earlier years is pretty useless and perhaps it would be better to do something else to learn vision and strategy.
I remember a kid i coached that started at about 11, he could move around on his skates but not much more. At the end of his first season he could keep up and he had among the best vision on the team. Second year he was my best D man..