It's still takes a lot of work to become an ice hockey pro. It's just that the player population is about 1 to 1,5 million. It's a small sport compared to football, basketball or volleyball. But as more and more countries industrialize and develop a middle class the number of ice hockey players will increase. There was a story on Kymmenen Uutiset about Kenyan ice hockey players who trained in the only ice hall of the country in Nairobi. They had boys and girls. That there even exists such a thing as Sub-Saharan African (SA excluded) ice hockey players was a complete surprise to me.