Advice-only planning for hockey players and other professional athletes, built around a short earning window, an unpredictable career length, and a life that lasts far longer than the contract.
We reviewed a widely reported sample of 50 former NHL players who ran into serious financial trouble after their playing days. Forty-eight of them had publicly reported career earnings, and together those minimums exceed one billion dollars. High income was never the problem.
The single most common thread. Restaurants, real estate, private deals brought by people inside the locker room and outside it, concentrated bets made with no plan behind them.
Health and financial collapse are rarely separate events. A plan that assumes uninterrupted earning power is a plan with no margin for the hardest years.
Marriage breakdown mid-career or shortly after retirement reshapes asset division, support obligations, housing and every retirement projection built before it.
Several of them after eight-figure careers. In more than one case the money was managed by family or by an advisor with an undisclosed conflict.
Including one player who earned more than $60 million and still filed. Sports betting access has expanded sharply since most of these careers ended.
Injury, waivers or a buyout arriving years before anyone expected. The players who struggled most were often the ones whose plan assumed the next contract.
Figures reflect our own categorization of publicly reported accounts and are used to illustrate common patterns. Categories overlap; many of these situations involved more than one factor. We name no individuals.
The average NHL career is short, and the average career of the players who make it to the NHL at all is shorter than anyone plans for. You may earn most of what you will ever earn between 22 and 32, in a currency you do not live in, taxed in jurisdictions you did not choose.
That compresses every decision. Money that would normally accumulate over forty working years has to be structured, protected and made durable in about ten. We build the plan around that reality instead of pretending it away.
We do not sell investments, we do not take custody of your money, and we do not require assets to be transferred to us. That matters in a profession where a striking number of financial failures trace back to someone who was paid to place the money rather than paid to give the advice. Our role is to build the plan, coordinate with your agent, accountant and lawyer, and keep it current as your contract, team and life change.
Almost every situation in that sample became unrecoverable after the income stopped. Planning done during the earning years is the difference between a career that funds the next fifty years and one that funds the next five.
Email us directly at info@bracketplanning.ca, or book a call to start the conversation.