Atom Pathway

Atom Player Pathway

The Hockey Canada Atom Player Pathway provides an environment that helps all girls and boys playing hockey at the Atom age level (nine and 10 years old) to realize their full potential. 

The primary focus of the youth hockey system is to develop a lifelong passion for sport, develop important life skills through hockey, and provide young girls and boys exposure to a development system that is progressive in nature and meets their needs based on age-specific and skill-appropriate programming.

With this in mind, the following items outline important framework that will lead to a positive experience for all players, parents, coaches and administrators.

Per the HNB Operations Manual, Minor Hockey Associations shall implement the following seasonal structure for Atom teams:

Try-out phase: Refers to the time period prior to the season starting -typically when prep camps and / or tryouts are held.
- No try-outs prior to the start of the school year
- No try-outs in off-season (April / May / June / July / August)
- No try-outs during the first week of school
- Associations must offer a minimum of 4 skates / practices prior to formal evaluations starting
- Try-outs must be a minimum of 3 formal tryouts / evaluation sessions. Recommendation is 1 skill session, 1 small area game session, 1 formal game.

Development phase: Refers to the time period following tryouts or evaluations prior to the start of the regular season starting.
- Must have a minimum of three weeks following team selection and prior to the start of regular season. Focus of the development phase is Skill Development.

Playoff phase: Refers to the time period from the end of the regular season through to the end of the Playoffs.
- Must be tournament style versus elimination rounds.

Additional requirements :
- Limit position specific specialization - rotate all players through all positions
- Goalies not playing, are permitted to play out as a skater
- Maximum of 45 games per season, excluding playoffs (includes tournaments and exhibition games)
- Fair / Equal ice-time