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Soon, Duchene was spending upwards of $22,000 per year to cover everything from tournament fees and spring hockey leagues to personal trainers and stickhandling development lessons. Not to mention the many one-piece composite sticks his son broke in a year, at about $200-$300 each.

“It’s unbelievable how much money you can spend just on equipment,” says Duchene.

By the end of Matt Duchene’s 13-year minor hockey career, his father estimated he had invested more than $300,000, which included potential loss of income because Vince, who is a real estate agent in Haliburton, Ont., was too busy taking his son to practices and games to sell houses.

“It was totally out of control,” says Duchene. “I knew I was spending that kind of money because all I had to do if I wanted to remind myself was look at the house I was living in at the time. I was in real estate and I had no cottage property, I had no investment and that was because 100 per cent of the dough was going into hockey.”

For Duchene, the investment was worth it. Not only was his son drafted into the NHL, he won an Olympic gold medal for Canada at the 2014 Olympics. He’s now on a five-year contract that pays him an average of US$6 million per season.

But not everyone makes it to the NHL. According to Jim Parcels, who co-authored the book Selling The Dream: How Hockey Parents and Their Kids Are Paying the Price for Our National Obsession, less than one per cent of Canadians who are registered in hockey from any single birth year will play even one game in the NHL.