Swedish National Team selections in ice hockey : A retrospective study

Sammanfattning: Countries invest a large amount of money in talent development and talent identification. The Swedish ice hockey federation is reorganizing and evaluating the national team selection system. Relative age effect (RAE) refers to a selection bias when relatively older athletes get selected because maturity can be mistaken for talent. This study aimed to examine the selection patterns in the Swedish ice hockey national team and see if there is a relationship between selected players and their birth month. Studies on selections have been conducted in Canadian ice hockey and different leagues, but no one has investigated selections in national team ice hockey.  A Quantitative approach was used, to analyze the sample from this retrospective study.The sample contained 384 players that has been selected for the Swedish youth and junior national team once or more from five different cohorts from 1997-2001. The statistical analyses were conducted through