Parminder Singh, left, and Harnarayan Singh, commentators on Hockey Night in Punjabi on the CBC, promote youth hockey recruitment.
Richard Tso surveys the roomful of people in the McGregor Park community centre, and grins wryly.
"This doesn't look much like Scarborough."
He's right, it doesn't: The demographics of one of the city's more diverse regions isn't reflected in the dozen or so people who've come together to try to rejuvenate youth hockey in Scarborough.
And that, Mr. Tso says, is the problem.
When his son Alex, now 14, decided he wanted to start playing ice hockey, his dad was nonplussed: It wasn't an issue of being new to Canada - Mr. Tso had lived in Scarborough for about a decade by then, and B.C. before that. But ice hockey was something that happened in arenas he was unfamiliar with.
"I didn't know how to do it. You walk by the arenas, you see, 'Yeah, there's people in there, there's hockey being played,' but I was like this - " he mimes someone peering in comical bemusement at an intriguing but wholly foreign scene.
"I didn't know if I was allowed in there. It was intimidating."
A task force designed to save Scarborough's dwindling hockey league is trying to change that - to recruit a new generation of hockey-crazy kids who may not have grown up with Roch Carrier's The Hockey Sweater.
The idea of aggressively marketing youth hockey is a new one for established leagues used to opening the doors and having people come in, says Phillip McKee, executive director of the Ontario Hockey Federation and an executive member of Hockey Canada. It means not only planning more outreach, but making equipment more accessible and affordable and making schedules more flexible to reflect family dynamics that have changed drastically since the league started in the 1960s.
But it's far from a Scarborough-specific problem, or even exclusively a GTA issue: Youth hockey leagues in Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal and elsewhere are facing similar challenges as their leagues are lost to attrition and graduating players aren't replaced.
"If we lose too much of it, we're never going to get it back: You lose the volunteer base," Mr. McKee said.
"We don't do a great job [of outreach]in hockey. … Up until about 10 years ago, we didn't have to: The game recruited for itself."
In Brampton, this new push to market hockey is being spearheaded by Binder and Parminder Singh, the people behind Hockey Night in Punjabi.
Playing ball hockey with his friends as a kid, Parminder Singh thought he was the next Mario Lemieux.
"I had great stick-handling skills. I don't like to brag, but in some areas you have to." He pauses. "Of course my biggest downfall was the fact that I couldn't skate."
Then, as now, the cost of equipment and registration was a barrier for a kid transplanted at age 7 from India's Punjab to Toronto's Jane-Finch neighbourhood. That's something Mr. Singh hopes to change in his work with the Brampton Youth Hockey Association, reaching out to families who wouldn't think to enroll their kids otherwise, and making it affordable for them to do so.
"We want to create a love for the game so that a new immigrant will feel very comfortable saying, 'You know what? This is Canada's favourite pastime and I want my kids to get involved.'" The BYHA is the result of merger of Brampton Minor Hockey Association and the Chinguacousy Minor Hockey Association in 1998.
In Scarborough, Margo Cowie has been watching the slow attrition for more than a decade, accompanying her son to games: Ten years ago, Scarborough's Hockey Association had more than 10,000 players; this past season it was down to 687. That's set to dwindle further now that the league's A-level players are being absorbed into the Greater Toronto Hockey League. If its lucky, the league that started in 1956 will have about 500 players left in a new "minor development" league next year, and just under 1,000 in house league.
But after months of messy youth-hockey politics that at one point escalated into legal action between competing leagues, Scarborough Councillor Michael Thompson says it's time to move forward.
"There's an expectation that certain things will happen and everything is fine because it's always happened that way. But with the changing demographic, changing landscape … this is a way to engage young people in positive activities," he said, adding that it's something communities across Canada are going to have to take into account as their demographics change.
"If what we do serves as a blueprint for success, I think it's a great opportunity for us."
The task force, which had its first public forum on the weekend, aims to bring a set of recommendations to community council next month.
Mr. Tso would like to see the task force succeed, and he's sure more people would be interested if the game were less clique-y and more accessible.
"For me, hockey is part of the very fabric of Canada. Before it used to be grandpa played, dad played, Uncle Bob played. That's not the case any more. The situation has changed, so you've got to communicate.
"If you can cross that threshold, you're building a new generation of kids who will want to play."