Kenny Jacoby

And so the effect is that you have a lot of rink owners that have been doing this for a long time, and they may be looking to get out of the business.

And Black Bear is the only buyer.

And so they can sort of buy these rinks on the cheap and take over for only just a couple, you know, a few million dollars for each one.

You know, I, how exasperated, very exasperated.

I spoke to more than 80 people for this story, parents, players, coaches, business owners, and current and former Black Bear employees.

And the distaste for Black Bear was pretty universal in a lot of my interviews.

The general feeling was that Black Bear is nickel and diming people, charging them for things like tryout fees and league fees and

fees to watch their own kids play.

And it's just turning a lot of people off.

I did not have a hard time getting a lot of people to speak on the record for this story because of how frustrated people are.

But I think the effect, you know, on the average family is that fewer and fewer people can actually afford to play the sport.

And so you may not be attracting, you know, the best players across the country because so many of them are getting priced out

when a season, you know, for an eight-year-old costs $5,000 or more.

Yeah, so USA Hockey has been pretty quiet about Black Bear.

From what I've seen, you know, USA Hockey as the national governing body, they are the entity that

could do the most to curb for-profit influence.

But in fact, I think what we've seen is that USA Hockey has largely embraced it.

There was a case that I found really interesting in the reporting here in Illinois.

And there, the state governing body, the USA Hockey affiliate, had a rule that it would not permit for-profit teams as members.

It would only permit non-profit teams.