Over recent weeks, many new visitors to the blog have come for my post on USA Hockey’s proposed body checking ban for the 12 & Under age group, also known as Pee Wees. It is a topic that has been and will be debated at length for many months to come. Many fear change, but the reasons behind it are completely understandable, especially as we learn more about head injuries in hockey.
As my previous post mentioned, one of the biggest reasons for the change is to encourage skill development, as players between the ages of 9-12 are in their prime window of skill acquisition. If you haven’t read it yet, check out the post as I go into more detail about this part of the proposal.
It is important to not overlook this fact: The new proposed rule would also ENCOURAGE body contact from the youngest levels of hockey. Meaning body angling, incidental contact and body positioning would be better taught at the younger levels and would mainly go unpenalized during games.
Of course, another reason for delaying checking until 14 & Under (Bantam) is safety. Concussions, namely, have been the topic du jour and why shouldn’t they be? The league’s best player is unable to play because of a head injury suffered months ago. The many concussions of players like Marc Savard, Eric Lindros and Keith Primeau, just to name a few, have been discussed at length of late. Most recently, the New York Times published a story on the effects hockey had on the late Bob Probert’s brain.
While Probert was known for earning a living with his fists and wracked up 246 fighting majors, it can be argued that body checking and the general physicality of hockey took its toll as well. No matter the cause, Probert ended up with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which comes with a whole host of unpleasant symptoms. According to Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy:
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head. CTE has been known to affect boxers since the 1920s. However, recent reports have been published of neuropathologically confirmed CTE in retired professional football players and other athletes who have a history of repetitive brain trauma. This trauma triggers progressive degeneration of the brain tissue, including the build-up of an abnormal protein called tau. These changes in the brain can begin months, years, or even decades after the last brain trauma or end of active athletic involvement. The brain degeneration is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia.
This is something to be considered when we talk about youth hockey. I’m not saying CTE is going to become a rampant issue among 12-year-olds, because most likely it will not. However, the risk of concussions remains at the younger levels of hockey. As the youth players get older and become more aggressive and are encouraged to hit harder, then we can all start to worry about multiple concussions over the course of even a youth hockey career.
The United States of Hockey 
