Dr. Jim King is the author of a report entitled
'Should Bodychecking be Allowed in Minor Hockey?'
His conclusion: no. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)Dr. Jim King has helped too many kids onto stretchers to be comfortable watching minor hockey at a competitive level.
He's not a hockey team doctor, but the Ottawa pediatrician is the father of two hockey-playing sons. King has spent a lot of time at the rink. Too many times, he had to be more than a spectator.
"I have on a handful of occasions assisted in logrolling kids for them to be taken to the hospital to assess whether they've had a spinal injury," says King. "Nobody has, fortunately."
Only when his kids started playing in non-checking leagues did King enjoy going to the rink. The injuries weren't happening like they did when bodychecking was part of the game.
Medical studies support what this hockey dad and doctor has experienced firsthand. A researcher whose focus at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario is injury prevention, King co-authored a report in the summer of 2006 entitled, Should Bodychecking be Allowed in Minor Hockey?
The conclusion: No.
"The risk is going to be at least two-fold, could be up to 12-fold, increased chance of a serious injury when bodychecking is introduced. We're talking about an injury that's bad enough for a child to present to an emergency department, and/or have a fracture, " King says. "When you think about it, it seems to me to be an unacceptably high risk for the length of exposure."
He adds: "In general, my views aren't always agreed with amongst the parents on the competitive side."
King's findings were based in part on a study conducted by a group of physicians who looked at the effect of bodychecking on injury rates among minor hockey players in the Edmonton area.
Conspiracy of silence
What they found in comparing 11-year-olds playing checking versus non-checking hockey was that those checking were injured and visited the emergency room more than twice as many times as the non-checking players.
"There are lots of myths associated with hockey," says Brian Rowe, one of six doctors to conduct the study. "Obviously, it's a cultural staple in Canada, and so some people say, 'The earlier you can start the kids checking, the better.' And there's pretty much no evidence of that. In fact, there's pretty good evidence that as soon as you start them checking, they'll get injured."
An emergency doctor and researcher with the University of Alberta, Rowe says he's "disappointed" with Canadian medical organizations that have not spoken out about the dangers associated with checking in minor hockey.
"All these people should be coming out heavily against this, putting it in the perspective of the evidence, and eliminating the emotions," says Rowe. "There's a conflict of interest here across the board. I think that's the conspiracy of silence that's occurring."
While the medical evidence suggests body checking causes injuries, the debate over body checking in minor hockey is still being played out in rinks across the country. Checking used to be introduced at the atom age (9 and 10), but Hockey Canada now requires all provinces begin checking no earlier than peewee (11 and 12). In Quebec, players don't start hitting until bantam (13 and 14).
Concussion at age 9
Until this season, Ontario and Saskatchewan were part of a pilot project that saw them checking at the atom level. Tristan Carey of Swift Current, Sask., took his first big hit - and got his first concussion - last season at age 9 during his first year of competitive atom hockey.
"The only time we got hurt is if we got hit from behind or something," says Tristan, now 10, and at 4-foot-8, one of the smallest kids on his team. "It happened to me a couple of times and I got a concussion. It wasn't that bad, though."
Now in his second year of atom, Tristan won't be bodychecking until he plays peewee next season.
"I don't really like it that they took hitting out," he says. "Right when I started hitting well and I wasn't afraid anymore, it's gone."
Tristan's dad is president of Swift Current Minor Hockey. Al Carey says because of the size disparity at the peewee age, with some kids having growth spurts and some not, he prefers that checking is introduced in atom.
"Tristan coped. He was a smaller kid, so he took a few licks early and then he got on to it. He learned quickly to keep his head up," Carey says. "There's some downsides to checking in atom, but the kids are all smaller, and the bigger kids aren't very mobile. I think in the long and short of it all, there was a lot less injuries than you'd see if they started in peewee.
"If they start at nine years old, they learn the right ways. To me, that's still the best way."
Perennial debate
It's an opinion shared by many in the minor hockey world.
"This question comes up every single year," says Joe Peters, president of the St. Stephen Minor Hockey League in New Brunswick. "Whether we should start checking in atom hockey always comes up at meetings. It's never been voted on to start it at an earlier age, but it seems like it's talked about every year."
Medical studies have found that introducing checking at an early age has no protective value in later years. Rowe, with the University of Alberta, says evidence suggests it only puts kids at a greater risk for injury.
"They've done some research to look at really teaching them how to take a hit. It still hurts, they still get injured, and in fact it didn't reduce injury," says Rowe. "It's pretty clear that as soon as you start the introduction of checking in childhood hockey, you start getting injuries."
The study Rowe and his associates conducted found bodychecking accounts for 50-86 per cent of all injuries. It also challenges the notion that checking is part of the game, since 85 per cent of youth players and 97 per cent of adults play hockey without it.
Checking options
"You don't check when you're a kid, you don't check when you're an adult. You don't check, except for a period between about 12 and 18, when your body's developing, when there's massive differences between children with respect to size," Rowe says. "It makes no sense."
The American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on sports and fitness recommends checking be limited until at least age 15, and the Canadian Academy of Sports Medicine says it should be eliminated from all minor hockey levels that aren't training for professional and international competition.
Rowe says another option is adopting the Quebec model across the country, so that checking is introduced only at the elite bantam level.
"I think if you look at the statistics, there's pretty compelling evidence that what we're doing now is detrimental to children," he says. "That's the kind of consequence we have."
