One coach in the GTHL estimates 90 per cent of AAA coaches in the league are being paid. (Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images)There are a lot of tight lips and padded pockets in the Greater Toronto Hockey League.
It’s clear that AAA coaches are being paid – 90 per cent of them, if you ask Toronto Junior Canadiens peewee coach Jules Jardine. He’s among them, and he’ll admit it.
But when it comes to how much these coaches are making and where the cash is coming from, well, people aren’t so willing to talk about that.
Says Jardine, “I’d rather keep that personal.”
The former pro will say the average coach salary at the AAA level these days is between $5,000 – $12,000, but that number varies, depending on who you ask.
“It’s not getting crazy,” says Jardine, who played pro hockey in Europe and one season in the CHL. “I have heard some crazy numbers out there, though.”
Numbers like $50,000 and more, but it’s all rumours. Nobody’s owning up or naming names.
“When a minor midget coach is getting $70,000 a year, I consider that incredible,” says Mike Chraba, GM of the AAA Toronto Marlboros. He doesn’t agree with it, but he’s heard about it.
Director of Victoria Minor Hockey Rob Richardson says it’s about time hockey was on par with other sports, where payment for coaches is the norm.
“My son was nine and figure skating, we had to pay his coach, we had to pay for his coach to go to a figure skating competition, pay her wages, expenses, everything,” Richardson says. “Why shouldn’t the same be applied to minor hockey?”
Richardson studied minor leagues across the country before deciding coaches in Victoria should be eligible to earn between $1,500 — $7,500 for a season, on top of expenses. Of all the coaching salaries he looked at, Richardson says, “Toronto is the extreme.”
Vaive’s salary a secret
Former NHLer Rick Vaive admits he was paid for his stint behind the bench with the Toronto Nationals minor midget team last season, but the former Maple Leafs captain isn’t naming numbers.
“Mainly it was a Christmas bonus more than anything else,” Vaive says. “Basically, it was taking care of expenses…There was a little bit more to it, for, you know what I mean, putting in the amount of hours.”
Vaive says it wasn’t a job, and the money was “nothing I was going to live on.”
“I live in Oakville, and it’s pretty expensive to live in Oakville,” he says. “This was not something that would get me through the year as far as my personal expenses go.”
Nationals GM Garry Punchard wasn’t naming numbers, either, when it comes to Vaive’s salary.
“It was only rumoured it was too much,” Punchard says. “What do I consider too much? Anything over zero. It was quite a bit more than that, I understand.”
As for the source of the cash, Punchard says the Nationals have never paid a coach — the money usually comes from parents of kids on the team. Sometimes it’s one wealthy parent who sponsors the coach.
The GM says this means coaching salaries may have no bounds in Toronto’s minor hockey system.
“It could be unlimited if there’s a wealth on a certain team, meaning there’s no purse-strings attached.”
‘Parents control the league’
The GTHL requires teams submit a budget before players commit to a season, so they know exactly what they’re signing up for and where their money is being used.
“Some teams in the organization have different budgets,” says Punchard. “They have an influx of cash, let’s put it that way.”
The GM says this started happening, to his knowledge, about 10 years ago.
“Certainly it’s not like it was 25 years ago, and of course that all stems from the parents. You’ve got to understand that the parents control the league, and that’s not to be nasty to them, but it’s just that that’s the way it goes,” Punchard says.
“Whether it’s A, AA, AAA or house league or select teams, the parents seem to be more involved today than they were 25, 30 years ago.”
Like the Nationals, the Toronto Marlboros don’t condone paying coaches, but it’s hard to stop. That organization’s GM said there are no paid coaches in the system right now, but there have been in the past, with salaries as high as $40,000.
“If a parent group wants to get together and decide they want to recruit a coach and spend money on it, that coach first of all has to be proofed by us,” says Chraba. “We also go to the coach and say, ‘This is not right. We’re tolerating it for this year only.’”
The situation they’re trying to avoid is what happens when parents pay the coach and decide they should have control over the team. Chraba says that’s why no paid coach has been with the Marlboros for two consecutive years.
“We just can’t see people getting paid to coach, it’s not right,” he says. “The problem isn’t when coaches are paid to cover their expenses, the problem is when you get a coach that really wants to take advantage of parents because of his expertise and charges extra money.
“Being paid a salary, I don’t think can be justifiable.”
Troy Binnie played a decade of pro hockey and now coaches his son Mitchell’s peewee AAA team with the Nationals. He said he’d never accept a cent, unless he was coaching at the junior level or higher. This puts him in the minority in the GTHL’s AAA ranks.
“I just think it’s taken away from the game,” Binnie says. “It is still a game. When Gretzky and all the true hockey stars, even Sidney Crosby, were playing minor hockey, none of their coaches were paid. They were parent volunteers, volunteers period.
“These guys that are being paid to coach right now, when they were growing up, they had parent volunteers coaching them. Why aren’t they putting the time back in that those parents put in for them?”
Average salary: $25,000?
Binnie’s main concern is the way it’s changing the focus of the game for the kids.
“There’s not as much fun in the game as there used to be. It’s all about winning, it’s all about having the best 12-year-old do a dumbbell workout,” he says.
The coach says from what he’s heard, the average salary for AAA coaches in the GTHL is $25,000, with $15,000 being “the low range.”
“There’s lots of money in hockey,” Binnie says. “Minor hockey is a business nowadays, it really is.”
Those in favour of paying coaches will say the same thing — it’s a business, and if winning and development are a priority, why not recruit the best coaches and reward them?
“You’re putting in a lot of time developing these kids,” says Vaive. “I don’t think it should get out of control, but at the same time, the GTHL is a business and these kids are there, they’re paying lots of money to play there, so you want to give them the best possible people to coach.
“In order to get top-level people to come in that can teach these kids, in some cases you have to pay them. If you have organizations that are willing to do that, then I don’t see a problem with it.”
Judging by the number of teams willing to pay for top-end AAA coaches, it seems few in the GTHL have a problem with it, either.
“What seems to be something that was sort of taboo 15 years ago, paying minor hockey coaches, is really the norm now,” says Jardine, who’s been coaching in the league for 10 years.
While he thinks a salary of $50,000 is too much at the minor levels, Jardine notes, “it’s what the market will bear.” And in the GTHL, he says, that’s a lot.
“There’s no end to some of the possibilities that could develop over the years.”
This is the last of Our Game’s three-part series on paid positions in minor hockey. Also see part one: ‘It’s supposed to be volunteer’ , and part two: Coaches courted with payment in minor hockey.
