I'm glad you brought this up....So why... is the question that there is so many young kids involved in the game of hockey in Martensville and Warman? Or even better take a small community of 250 kids and they have a bantam team? The question that needs to be answered is this, the fact that Saskatoon and regina have the lowest per capita registration numbers in the province. Very interesting, I'm going with number one cost, then commitment(from parents), and finally smha themselves, including the city who has dropped the ball on not having a multi function facility to house the amount of hockey. When you say registration number you do realize that at the bantam level there is already a split in the quality of kids. just cause Sv has 60 kids at camp does that make all 60 kids available to play bantam aa. You didn't watch SV this season then if you believe that. The way the city is going there is less and less kids being drafted out of a bigger population....why? The ODR in the cities hardly ever get used anymore? why? When you walk into Mvilles rink do you see the buzz on the ODR? The problem lies in your hockey community not the provinces, you may want to look at that before tweaking others.
You raise some valid point here, but I think there are a few different issues getting confused in this conversation. Here's my take on what those are:
If there are enough bantam aged kids registering for hockey in Martensville and Warman to justify two teams, then there should probably be two teams. This is a separate issue from
why relatively more kids are registering there than in other places. The number of teams needs to be based on participation level, not based on the causes of that participation level. I don't think we can say, for example "the kids in your community like hockey (compared to other activities) more than the kids in another community, so as a reward you guys get to concentrate your talent more".
It may well be that there is something controllable that's causing kids in the cities to shun hockey as an activity - maybe it has to do with cost, maybe it has to do with SMHA, etc. But those causes are basically irrelevant to the question at hand: how many teams should each area have?
That said, participation in the sport (and reasons for the lackthereof) should be something that we consider on a larger scale - how can we grow the game, how can we develop hockey players, etc. Unfortunately, though, that's beside the point of this
current discussion. The number of teams needs to reflect the reality of the
current situation - what is, not what should be or what could be or what is going to be.