Feb 15, 2018 | Jon Thompson | 2801 views
Body Checking - Is A Skill
Just like skating, shooting, passing or playing net.
Paul Coffey and Wendel Clark are on opposite sides of the fence when it comes to bodychecking in kids’ hockey.
“I personally think it’s a huge mistake,” said Paul Coffey, the Hall of Fame defenceman, a longtime coach in the Greater Toronto Hockey League. “I think it’s going to allow kids to skate with their heads down.”
Still, despite hearing plenty of arguments to keep bodychecking in peewee or to introduce it at younger ages, Hockey Canada’s board of directors voted overwhelmingly to support the bantam introduction. Factoring into the decision was relatively recent research that showed a three-fold increase in the risk of injury for peewee players in Alberta, where body contact was previously permitted, compared with Quebec, where body checking had already been eliminated.
The move was applauded by members of the Canadian Paediatric Society, who have pointed to studies that suggest children who suffer concussions in early adolescence are more susceptible to future brain injuries. Advocates say the new landscape will allow peewee players to focus on developing their skills instead of protecting themselves from potential calamity.
“I think you’ll actually enhance a lot of the skating abilities, especially in your defencemen,” said Wendel Clark, the hard-hitting Maple Leafs legend who coaches the Toronto Young Nationals major bantam AAA squad. “Your defenceman can’t just stop and hit a guy. He has to learn to pivot and turn and cross over and do what the puck carrier does.”
Clark, like many hockey lifers, said he can see both sides of the bodychecking argument and pointed out that he doesn’t disagree with the thinking of the Saskatchewan Minor Hockey Association, the lone provincial body to vote against the age-group change. Any set of rules can work, Clark figures, so long as everyone follows them. Saskatchewan has long advocated for checking in atom, where the players can be as young as 8, arguing that those who learn at a younger age will be more apt to stay injury-free as they move up the ranks.
“I’ve been fighting this battle for 19 years,” said Kelly McClintock, general manager of the Saskatchewan Minor Hockey Association. “We’ve tried to tell people that (bodychecking) is a skill, and it’s something that should be taught at a young age.”
Said Al Rourke, a former Maple Leafs draft pick who coaches the Toronto Penguins AA minor peewee team: “I think they need to learn it younger (than peewee). ... (By introducing bodychecking in) minor bantam, you’re pretty much feeding them to the wolves. There’s puberty. There’s small kids. There’s bigger kids. I think there’s going to be more severe injuries starting hitting at an older age.”
There tend to be more injuries, many observers say, when officials allow physical exchanges to spiral out of control. University of Regina researcher Harold Riemer has recommended putting an emphasis on experienced refereeing in whatever age group bodychecking is implemented. Others see another source of blame for the reckless kind of contact that can put players in peril.
“I honestly think the biggest issue is coaching,” Coffey said. “Coaches get so ramped up — they’re just as guilty, if not more guilty, than the kids taking penalties for (reckless hits).”
McClintock said Saskatchewan will comply with Hockey Canada’s regulations, even if he has received calls from organizers proposing outlaw peewee leagues that would include bodychecking and not be sanctioned by the national governing body.
“Here’s my recommendation to them: Don’t do it,” McClintock said. “You don’t leave the system, because there’s too many benefits.”
There’s a widespread perception that the skills of giving and receiving a hit aren’t being taught correctly. As Toronto minor hockey coach Jim Vitale points out, now that hitting is gone from peewee, players will be deprived of two seasons’ worth of game situations in which to learn about potential danger in what Vitale called a “baptism by fire.” But Vitale said the age-group change is a step in the right direction of changing the culture of the sport. As technical director of Stop Concussions, a head injury awareness and treatment program whose overseers include ex-NHLers Keith and Wayne Primeau, Vitale said it’s imperative that the national winter sport stops glorifying the act of “hurting a guy to get the puck.”
“We just have to teach kids, ‘Take away space, lean in when you have to, but lift sticks, sweep check.’ They’re all just as effective as pulverizing a guy,” Vitale said. “The quality of the game will improve. I think Hockey Canada, if they put the right resources in place, they’re doing a justice for kids. I think, in the end, everybody’s going to win.”
Bob Nicholson, the Hockey Canada president, has acknowledged that ensuring coaching standards are upheld is a difficult challenge for a national governing body. And there are those who believe too much is made of the introduction of hitting. Clark, for one, said many owners of hockey schools run bodychecking clinics he calls “a money grab.”
Clark said that when he was head coach of his son Cody’s team in its first year of hitting a couple of years back, he didn’t put much emphasis on the skill.
“We didn’t coach hitting, we didn’t prep hitting, we didn’t even talk about it. We didn’t want it to be a novelty,” said Clark. “I just told my team, ‘Keep your feet moving and keep your head up. If (opposing teams are) going to hit just to hit, and not hit for a reason, they’re going to put themselves out of the play and you’ll beat them that way.’ And the teams we played against —they spent all day in the penalty box. They took hitting lessons, they were so excited when the coaches started teaching it.”
Katherine Devlin said she saw her share of wild on-ice behaviour in her son Sean’s spring hockey tournaments, where some first-time bodycheckers went overboard. But even that experience didn’t compel her to agree with Hockey Canada’s decision to turn next season’s peewee leagues into no-hitting zones.
“I saw my son’s team using hitting as just another skill. I saw them using it to knock kids off the puck and go on with the play. I saw other teams that looked horrific. It looked to me like they thought body contact was just a licence to behave like goons,” Devlin said. “But I believe in (bodychecking) in hockey. A lot of boys, they have that (aggression) in them. It’s going to come out. It might as well be on the ice.”
from the Toronto Star