Chapter Two

BODY CHECKING

June 2011. Welcome to the role as President of Hockey Calgary. First motion of business: pro­posed wording of the following motion.

The Hockey Calgary Executive Committee is instructed by the membership to establish a sub-committee at the start of the 2011 / 2012 hockey season for the purposes of reviewing the impact of body checking in all levels of hockey where body checking is currently al­lowed. The sub-committee is to report back to the Board of Directors with recommendations on how to enhance player safer with a focus on injury reduction associated with potential continued inclusion or removal of body check­ing in Peewee hockey.

Rationale for changing the motion:

The sub-committee is expected to review cur­rent research and studies that are available on the topic in order to finalize once and for all an association wide position on the sensitive issue of body checking in minor hockey.

The previous motion is the actual request from the members at large going into my year as President. Little did I know what lay ahead. At the time, this motion seemed to be a crystal clear mandate. In­deed, if we are actually desiring the way forward to enhance player safety, then the answer is crystal clear. Unfortunately, our “mandate” was built on a foundation of sand.

There is no way that you will send your son to a school that is 33% more dangerous than your oth­er choice. You won’t introduce him to a babysitter who is 33% more likely to hurt him. And you won’t give him food that is 33% more likely to cause cancer. So, why would you want your son to engage in body checking in Peewee hockey, when you know that he is 33% more likely to get hurt?

I recently heard the argument that people die in cars, and that hasn’t stopped us from driving. Sorry, but that is the type of moronic comment we are up against. You would be shocked if you knew who said it.

We are talking about major injuries here, defined as injuries that mean lost time from the game of hockey, including broken limbs, concussions, and many other terrible possibilities. We will talk about concussions more in Chapter Three, but they are a big consequence of body checking in the minor leagues.

When it comes down to it, we know our kids will get hurt far less often if we simply cease to allow them to body check until they are older. We will reduce the number of concussions, and all physical injuries. Why do we want them to continue body checking one another in the face of all of the evi­dence? It’s moronic.

It was easy for us to commission a study that re­searched the effects of body checking. But do we have the strength to act on those results? After countless hours of research, review, and a seven-year timetable, two scientists came back with in­credibly significant results. We decided that their findings were significant enough to create a com­mittee that would investigate the matter.

An important point to reference here is the mem­bers were already surveyed by an independent firm, Provoke. 3600 people participated in the survey and Hockey Calgary broke the data down by community. All of the information was made readily available to all and continues to be availa­ble on www.hockeycalgary.ca, the Hockey Calgary website. A majority, more than 50 percent of those surveyed, wanted a safer environment from body checking for children in Peewee.

The committee’s 52-page document basically told the Hockey Calgary Board, Remove body checking. Here’s where things get strange. What happens as a result? Was the proposal accepted by the heads of the hockey associations that were a part of Hockey Calgary? No. Eight of the 24 hockey associations in our organization decided that they didn’t like that message. They wanted to keep body checking, despite the risks.

Believe it or not, those presidents and leaders de­cided not to engage families in their associations, and instead, decided to derail the entire debate, and bully some of the other presidents into joining them.

What was their argument against body checking? They had three main points:

1. Kids wouldn’t be allowed to play in tour­naments, because other associations had body checking.
2. The young players’ hockey development would be negatively impacted.
3. Let others implement these changes first.

My answers to those three points are as follows:

1. Kids would be able to play in tournaments without any trouble; the reality is that tournament play amounts to three or four games of a 20-game season, and there are plenty of areas to go to play in tourna­ments that likewise would not allow body checking.
2. NHL players have come out to talk about this, and studies also show the opposite of what our detractors believed. Young play­ers might even show better development when body checking is not in the equation during development years. Additionally, USA Hockey had just completed a study clearly identifying that children in this age category do not have the cognitive learning ability to successfully include body check­ing in their game play.
3. The data show that our children will be safer with a few common sense regulations. There’s no reason to wait.

Long story short, when all of the presidents and leaders in Hockey Calgary came together, they took a vote that was not indicative of the general public’s desire to eliminate body checking. They overturned the decision that the Board of Hockey Calgary had made. Body checking would stay, at least for now.

Let’s talk about body checking for a moment. In­juries don’t just happen when body checking is done illegally. A legal hit can cause serious dam­age to kids this age. We’re not talking about some wingnut’s behaviour, throwing a stick around or hitting a guy in the head. We are talking about an open ice body check that results in a child being injured.

The purpose of a body check is to gain possession of the puck. Essentially, this means that you are moving the opponent off the puck for the sole purpose of gaining possession of the puck. It’s not as simple as it sounds. When two hockey players hit one another this way, they will do a few different (legal) things. They might rub you, push you up against the boards, or body check you on the open ice. And as long as your hands are down, and you’re not making any kind of upper body gesture to the person’s head or sticking your knee out, body checking is allowed.

For further reference here is the clearly articulated excerpt from Hockey Canada:

The Hockey Canada Four-Step Checking Model

• Step #1 – Positioning and Angling The first step in teaching Checking is to learn how to control skating and establish position to approach the opponent from an angle minimizing time and space for the opponent.
  
  
• Step #2 – Stick Checks
  The second step is to effectively use the stick, poke checking and sweep checking, lifting and locking the opponent’s stick.
  
  
• Step #3 – Body Contact
  The third step is to use the body to block the opponent’s way or take away the skating lanes of another player. The correct stance and effective use of leg strength are important parts of these techniques.
  
  
• Step #4 – Body Checking
  The fourth and final step is actual body checking. This step includes teaching techniques to check and receive a body check as well as safety and rules.

Unfortunately, body checking has taken on a life of its own, and sometimes isn’t used only to take control of the puck. In other words, Hockey Can­ada’s Four-Step Checking Model isn’t being fol­lowed. It’s become at times an aggressive act. If one player has his head down, skating with the puck, the defender is allowed to literally ram right into him on the open ice, throwing him off the puck. This can cause serious damage to the player being hit, especially if they didn’t see the hit com­ing. Although, according to the rules, that’s a legal hit because you did not hit the player’s head, you did not stick your knee out, and you did it with your body and your arms forward across your chest, you might have seriously injured the other player, especially if they are smaller than you are. In the eleven- to twelve-year-old Peewee category in particular, these children are still trying to learn how to handle the stick, pass the puck, and skate, not protect themselves from body checks on the open ice.

At the end of the day, they are just kids. We are talking about Fourth and Fifth Graders – that time in life where everyone varies dramatically in shape and size. One little guy is scrawny and barely tall enough to go on amusement park rides, and another one looks like he’s already in full-blown puberty.

Furthermore, these kids are just learning how to body check, and are highly reliant on their coach to teach them about this strange and frightening new aspect of the game. We rely on volunteers to teach kids about body checking, and hope that they receive consistent training, but we can’t be sure. So, we have Fourth and Fifth Graders on the ice, most of them have never had body checking ever in their life, and most of them have not had the full-fledged coaching experience they would need to teach them how to give and receive proper body checks. This situation is an accident waiting to happen.

I recall one situation quite vividly, involving a ra­ther large boy and a relatively small boy, both of them in their first year of the Peewee category, during the third game of the season. The smaller eleven-year-old was skating out of his defensive zone during the game, and clearly had his head down. As he crossed the blue line, the larger boy did a textbook job of body checking the small boy, and stood the kid right up as he skated towards him. This was a legal body check. The large boy’s arms were down, and he didn’t hit the smaller boy’s head. He simply made a good, solid body check.

Of course, what happened to that small child is that he was thrust down on the ice in a very, very impactful way. He lay there motionless. The air left the room as the stands became silent.

An NHL player never would have put himself in that position. First off, he would have had his head up, and he would have been looking around. And second of all, the opposing player wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to give that kind of body check.

The problem here is that you have a system, in particular in the Peewee age category, where you have young or less seasoned coaches, and young players who are inexperienced with the concept of body checking. There are ways of educating the giving and receiving of body checks, but coaches aren’t doing it correctly all the time, so there are big risks to these kids as a result.

In Hockey Calgary, we were responsible for 1,500 Peewee children, who mostly had coaches with very little experience. Layer that on top of Moms and Dads (particularly Dads) who were probably raised in an environment of “Suck it up,” and “You just got your bell rung.”

Little Johnny was lying motionless on the ice, and several of the parents had now come closer to the glass, to see if Johnny was going to be okay. Pre­sumably one of those parents was Johnny’s mother, gasping and horrified at the thought that her son was lying there motionless on the ice, facedown.

At the same time, from the other side of the rink, Coach Smith is scooting across the ice in his tennis shoes towards little Johnny. The referees were standing 20-30 feet away, talking to one another. These teenaged boys would have been scared that they had missed a call that might have led to this moment.

The coach, of course, while shuffling across the ice, is letting a few choice words fly out of his mouth in the direction of the referees who, in his opinion, have missed a call. Unfortunately, the fact that lit­tle Johnny is lying on the ice doesn’t mean he was fouled. In this case, he had been legally checked, even though he seemed to be very hurt by the hit.

When the coach reached little Johnny, it becomes pretty clear that Johnny is terrified, scared more than anything over the fact that he’s just had this huge, huge hit; he still lay motionless on the ice. Thankfully the coach didn’t try to move him ini­tially, and he allowed Johnny to decide of his own accord whether he could move or not.

For a few minutes, all of the parents pressed up against the glass, watching, the referees stood a good distance away, and the players were all as­signed back to their benches. You could hear a pin drop in the arena, as this ten-year-old Fourth Grader was lying on the ice motionless. Thankfully, eventually Johnny was able to, of his own accord, roll over and sit up. He was visibly shaken up by this, and was in tears. He was helped to his feet, and thankfully, he was not severely injured.

This situation, in particular, ended well. Johnny returned to the bench, and a few shifts later, he was back skating. However, all too often, the out­come of such an accident is a little bit different.

Within this book so far, I’ve spoken out mostly about body checking among eleven- to twelve-year-old children in the Peewee age group. But I personally believe that there shouldn’t be body checking in any children’s leagues, except for pos­sibly the most elite groups. Hockey for 99% of the­se children is about camaraderie and enjoyment – not unlike within adult recreational, or “beer” leagues.

What is interesting is that, within beer league or recreational hockey for adults, there is no body checking. Why? Because the businesspeople who play in those leagues need to wake up the next day to go to work. Shouldn’t we be thinking the same thing about our children? If they get hit too hard, they may not be able to go to school. Isn’t there something the matter with this?

On a snowy day in Calgary, I look out my window and see kids playing on the pond that’s just over the hill. That’s what hockey is all about. It’s about kids having fun. That’s where this game came from. And it’s what we need to remember at the ice arena.

This nostalgic memory of playing on a pond out­side in the middle of the winter conflicts directly with the vision of some parents and coaches in our current environment. They want their team to win at all costs, and they want their kid to end up in the NHL and get fame and fortune. Believe it or not, this is one of the main arguments against the elimination of body checking at the Peewee level.

Some coaches and parents believe that their kids need to start learning to body check at age eleven, or they won’t be able to get into the NHL. We tested that hypothesis, and we spoke to several members of the NHL, and to other experts as well.

Hockey Calgary board had an NHL advisory board that was put together by alumni from the NHL. The general manager and I met with those individuals and asked them to be part of our advi­sory board. They attended a couple of meetings with us and on that agenda was the topic of body checking.

Every single NHL player on that advisory board said, given the data available and their personal experience, that it made no sense to keep body checking in Peewee. Not one of them argued the point of leaving it in.

After reading all of my impassioned rhetoric about the perils of body checking, you will be surprised to hear that I was the guy on the Hockey Calgary Board who didn’t want to get rid of body checking when I first saw the result of Dr. Carolyn Emery’s study.⁴ I was the person sitting in that room saying, “You have got to be kidding me. You shouldn’t take body checking out of Peewee – you’re going to hurt the kids in the next level up, Bantam. We have to leave it in!”

Body Checking Fast Facts

• Body Checking is the single most consistent risk factor for injury to minor hockey players.
• Body Checking is associated with between 45 and 86 percent of injuries in minor hockey.
• Kids who body check at the Peewee level are three times more likely to suffer from a concussion or major injury.
• Deferring body checking to Bantam will allow for further focus on skill development at the Peewee level rather than players skating around trying to deliver body checks, or avoid body checks.
• The introduction of body checking at any age will increase injuries.
• The evidence speaks to concussions occurring in higher levels of pee wee, (divisions 1-3) not lower ones. Making the decision to keep it in higher levels would be contraindicated by the evidence.
• Concussions are especially damaging to younger children and could have a longer term affect on their health than those who might become concussed later in life.
• Skill level development actually goes up when body checking is removed. Hockey USA has revealed their own study that showed kids learn and practice better fundamental skills when hitting is removed from the category. There is less intimidation in the game and more room to work on hockey skills.
• Peewee players who wish to play at the elite level will not be affected, they will still be taught the fundamentals of body checking in practices which will prepare them for the future.
• According to Dr. Caroyln Emery's findings, Peewee Players make up 60 percent of concussion cases in Hockey, compared to 30 percent in Bantam and Midget.

Other Facts

• Currently there are 1,190 Peewee kids registered with Hockey Calgary.
• Hockey Calgary has 13,200 registered hockey players.
• Hockey Calgary is the largest minor hockey associations in Alberta.

We challenged Dr. Emery’s study. She had com­pared Calgary to Quebec in the first study, but she had only given us results from the Peewee age group. We wanted to see what impact the elimina­tion of body checking in Peewee would have on the kids once they reached Bantam. We thought that we might actually be creating a bigger prob­lem by eliminating body checking, because chil­dren were bigger at 13 and 14 than they were at eleven and twelve. So, we challenged her study. We wanted to see what would happen in Bantam before we made any recommendations.

Every sport has their problems – there’s no ques­tion. Whether it is soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby, or countless other popular sports, they all have in­juries in them. But every sport has an obligation to review what’s going on. In the absence of data, I say to every one of those sports, go out and get the data. Get a data sampling, just as the NFL is now doing in football; they’ve put in place the inten­tional head contact rule, which never used to be in NFL.

Dr. Emery came back to us two years ago, and she reviewed the studies with us during our board meetings. More than fifty scientists worked on the study, and it is an incredible piece of work.

I asked every question I could think of. And I couldn’t find one single data point pointing towards the fact that we should allow Peewee children to go onto the ice and body check one another. I couldn’t find one.

To knowingly put eleven- and twelve-year-old boys on the ice, knowing that there’s a 33% greater chance for injury in our hockey environ­ment than Quebec’s hockey environment, and that they are going to experience 33% more major injuries, is moronic.

How can we change the rules of hockey so quick­ly? I’ll tell you how it can work.

1. Simply ban body checking in Peewee, making it a foul, just as it is in Atom, the age category below Peewee. We would save an approximate annual number of 500 serious injuries in Calgary alone.
2. Give kids leaving Peewee and entering Bantam level hockey better instructions. Always give kids two practices to every game. And dedicate at least a third of every practice to teaching Peewee players in a safe environment how to body check, help­ing them to build up their skills and knowledge of body checking as the year progresses.
3. Teach them about the dangers of open-ice body checking. Unfortunately, the NHL and sports broadcasts have glamorized big open-ice hits that leave someone motion­less on the ice. I don’t think anyone gets a thrill out of seeing children motionless on the ice as a result of such an aggressive hit.
4. Become informed. Do the research. There are hundreds of readily available books and articles on this topic. There are also many experts, scientists, and doctors that are prepared to come and talk to you about this. It’s a matter of getting educated. Unfortunately, if you don’t do step 4, in terms of education and getting informed, then you’re going to run into another problem. The numbers of kids in minor hockey will continue to diminish. Talk to your hockey branch, and Hockey Canada. They have tremendous resources available, and are readily available to help.

Although the ban on Peewee body checking was voted down in our Hockey Calgary organization, I applaud what’s going on in the United States right now. USA Hockey has taken out Peewee body checking across the board, end of discussion (link to the video: http://bit.ly/usa-body-check). I hope that will happen in Canada someday soon as well.

For the life of me, I can’t imagine that any child wants to be exposed to more danger because they love body checking so much. I’ve watched too many frightened young children lying on the ice in tears after being hit by a brutal, legal body check.

I can’t think of any environment where parents would allow that to happen without a sense of trepidation. Quite frankly, if such an environment exists, I suspect we should be calling child welfare, not talking to the hockey association.

I challenge everyone, on both sides of the debate, to do research and become informed. As a result of getting informed, let your voice be heard.

Many have spoken up in different ways, but they have been met with resistance, and too many have given up. We cannot give up anymore.

Speak up, let your voice be heard, and get your message out to your hockey associations. There are many ways you can do that, from petitioning to simply attending general annual meetings and board meetings. Get involved as a volunteer, and stand up for a cause that is all about child safety.

Most importantly, if you are a parent, talk to your child, and encourage others to do the same. See if your child feels comfortable in every situation. Do they feel like they have a Magic Helmet on when they are on the ice rink, or do they enjoy the sport?

People at the highest levels of minor hockey have said to me, “Body checking is part of our game, it’s the way it should be, and it’s the way it’s always been.” They have said, “It’s the game of hockey – of course kids are going to get hurt! It’s just part of the game!”

No. It doesn’t have to be that way. You are wrong. That’s the kind of logic that made people think that “buckling up” in a car wasn’t “cool.” Unfor­tunately, if you don’t wear a seat belt, you might just get thrown through the front windshield of your car.

Take off the Moron Helmet. Everything will start making a lot more sense.

_________________

⁴ Study also includes Dr. Carolyn Emery’s colleagues: Jian Kang, PhD, Ian Shrier, MD, PhD, Claude Goulet, PhD, Brent E. Hagel, PhD, Brian W. Benson, MD, PhD, Alberto Nettel-Aguirre, PhD, Jenelle R. McAllister, MSc, Gavin M. Hamilton, MSc, Willem H. Meeuwisse, MD, PhD.