By Brian Whitwham
In a seemingly bizarre effort to make competitive minor hockey safer, players are now allowed to start hitting at nine years old.
As of this year, children in Ottawa and the surrounding areas who play competitive hockey will be allowed to bodycheck at the atom level, a division for boys aged nine and 10. Previously, contact did not begin until the pee wee division for ages 11 and 12. It may sound akin to using alcohol to extinguish a flame but a major study has concluded that this move will actually reduce the number of injuries.
“Bodychecking is a skill,” says Herbert Seguin, president of the Ottawa District Minor Hockey Association. “The longer you wait to introduce body contact into the game, the longer it takes to get used to it.”
During the past four years, a study was conducted on two of Ontario’s three major hockey leagues — the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF) and the Ottawa District Minor Hockey Association (ODMHA). Certain teams in the federation were allowed to hit while teams in the association were not. The study’s conclusion was that “there is no significant difference in the injury rates between the comparison groups,” and “no significant difference in the flow of the game.”
The study, conducted by Dr. Bill Montelpare, acting dean of graduate studies at Lakehead University, recommended that bodychecking be put in place, but that coaches emphasize the proper, clean way to give and receive a hit.
“The expectation is that this could help a lot of aspects of the game,” says Montelpare. “It’ll erase the stigma of not being able to wait until you get (old enough) to knock your buddy’s block off.”
But not everyone has been supportive of the rule. Tom Hughson is the coach of the East Ottawa Vanier Voyageurs Atom B team, which draws its talent from Centretown and the surrounding area. He says some parents didn’t like the idea of their kids playing with contact.
“That lowered the amount of players that came to try out,” he says adding that those parents opted instead to enter their children into houseleague where there’s no hitting.
Hughson, though, supports the rule and says it teaches the players how to hit before they reach puberty. He says this is important because the larger size differences during that period increases the risk of injury.
“So if you can introduce it at a younger level, it’s better for the long term,” he says.
Kids are learning earlier but they’re also being taught differently. The Canadian Hockey Association (CHA) has created a national head-checking rule to be applied across the country that makes any initial contact with the head illegal. This means hitting a player in open ice with his head down may warrant a penalty if there is any contact to the head.
The rule was put in place by the CHA in response to parent groups and others who were concerned about the rising number of concussions and head injuries at every level.
Mark Gallant, the referee-in-chief of the ODMHA says these changes are taking place because of increasing concern.
“There is more awareness out there to injury,” he says. “Parents are more concerned for their children’s safety.”
He adds, “there has been a lot of concern from old-school coaches,” over the head-checking rule, since it now makes a great defensive play illegal.
But, Gallant says, you also have to look at it from the other side, where the player who takes the hit may skate off the ice with a concussion, or worse.
For now, the competitive teams have only been playing for a little over a month and Hughson says it remains to be seen whether these new initiatives will improve the game.
“Because it’s the first year, there still isn’t that much contact because the kids don’t have it in their heads yet that this is part of the game.”