You can hear the jump in Andrew Raycroft’s voice when he talks about the Boston Bruins Learn to Play program.
“It’s literally the best thing,” he said.
The former Boston Bruins netminder travels in youth hockey circles these days with his kids. He knows how, around the ages of 9 or 10, the voices start growing about needing to be on this club team or that club team. The pressure ramps up to train during the summer. It gets serious quickly.
But the Bruins Learn to Play program? It’s nowhere close to that.
“It’s so innocent,” Raycroft said. “It’s so genuine. There’s nobody that isn’t just trying to love the game.”
From October to December, the Bruins host events, run by local youth hockey coaches, at more than 70 rinks. Raycroft, along with Bruins alumni Rick Middleton and Andrew Alberts, spends most of the fall months traveling New England to different rinks to be on the ice at Learn to Play events.
“I get to pop in, hang out and have fun,” Raycroft said. “I get to watch how great the coaches are at all these different locations.”
Raycroft, Middleton and Alberts are just the tip of the iceberg. The program is run by the team of Michael Dargin and Elizabeth Viola.
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The idea for Learn to Play came together in 2014. Dargin had been having conversations with the now-president of TD Garden and Bruins Chief Operating Officer Glen Thornborough. Dargin saw what the Pittsburgh Penguins were doing with Sidney Crosby and a similar program focused on getting kids into hockey, and wanted to create his own version of it.
That first year was six rinks and 300 kids. More than 10 years later, 35,000 kids have begun playing hockey through the Bruins Learn to Play program.
“It’s just really grown,” said Dargin, who hails from Littleton, Mass., and got his start in youth hockey development with the Nashville Predators from 2010-12.
“Sometimes, I felt like a glorified physical education teacher,” he said. “I was literally going to different schools four or five days a week and running classes for six to eight hours in gear to teach the teachers how to run hockey.”
Dargin eventually moved back to Boston to work for the Bruins. Teaching P.E. was no longer the mandate. Instead, it was about making hockey easier to get into and reviving town programs that were hurting.
The Bruins Learn to Play developed into what it is today — a program that funnels players into their local town youth programs. Retention rates have been high. According to Andover Youth Hockey, 85 percent of the players who were in the Bruins Learn to Play program signed up for town hockey. For Saugus/Lynnfield youth hockey, 40 of the 50 players in the Bruins program continued to play for their town. They had enough players to form an 8U in-house Mite league for the first time in a while. Their goal is to expand it this coming season. Chelmsford will have five Mite teams this coming season, which is the most it has ever had. Chelmsford organizers credit the Bruins Learn to Play program for expanding numbers.
The growth isn’t just in Massachusetts, either. At Conway Arena in Nashua, N.H., 66 players from last fall’s program signed up to play the full season. Forty of the 49 kids who attended the program for New Hampshire East Youth Hockey signed on for the season, and 29 made Mite teams this spring. There has been substantial growth for Enfield, Conn., too.
So, why does this program work so well?
It streamlines the process from registration to getting fitted for equipment to getting on the ice.
“There are so many kids and families that don’t even know where to go to start,” Raycroft said. “You get so many parents that wouldn’t know how to sign up for learn to play — they didn’t even know it was a thing. But because the Bruins are behind it, they’ll get the equipment and put the kids on the ice.”
The price point helps, too. For the past few seasons, it was $200 to sign up. That includes all equipment, which can be fitted in person, and four on-ice sessions. That price was raised to $225 this season.
“If we hear of anyone who needs help (paying), we never say no,” Dargin said.
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Viola arrived at the Bruins in 2019 after a standout career with SUNY Plattsburgh. The defender won three national championships in four years.
She grew up in Buffalo. Even in a hockey-obsessed place like Western New York, she often had to go to Canada to play. Many of her teams growing up were coed. There wasn’t much of a professional women’s hockey presence to aspire to.
That drive has helped Viola take charge of another aspect of the Bruins Learn to Play — all-girls events in the spring.
Along with girls being able to participate in the main fall events, the Bruins host on-ice, all-girls sessions in 14 locations during the spring. In total, a third of all players who’ve gone through the Bruins Learn to Play program are female.
“A lot of times, girls don’t want to skate with boys, especially when they’re younger,” Viola said. “They want to skate with their peers.”
In the spring, there’s also a big emphasis on exposing players to professional female hockey players, such as the Boston Fleet’s Jillian Dempsey (Winthrop, Mass.).
“The best part about it is getting to be out there and be a model for them to look to,” Dempsey said. “For them to be able to say, ‘Whoa, that’s a female professional hockey player.’ That’s something they can aspire to be.”
Dempsey and other members of the Fleet help out in the fall, too. At events, Viola will occasionally be asked if she plays for the Bruins.
“It’s things like that where boys see women and girls hockey players and they don’t even think twice about sharing the ice or being coached by them,” Viola said. “That’s a huge thing that I never experienced growing up.”
In an age when hockey becomes more serious with showcases and year-round activity, the Bruins Learn to Play program is a deviation.
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“Nowadays, some people specialize very early and it’s like they want their child ready to compete at the highest level possible,” Dempsey said. “And then it’s like, they’re 5 or 6 years old. It’s great to have those aspirations and it’s awesome to dream big. But it’s also important to remember that these are little kids and they just want to have fun and that’s the foundation of everything.
“With Learn to Play, it’s fun and it gets them exposed to this great game that ends up teaching them so many different values.”
