News

By Keith Hendrickson

The terrible and tragic incident of Jack Jablonski’s hockey injury has quickly opened up many eyes to what our game has grown into over the past 10 years or so. Some of us who have been involved in hockey for decades have discussed and tried to address the growing violence in our game.

Last week, the Minnesota State High School League was allowed to immediately add more severe punishment for three violent offenses: hitting from behind, boarding and head contact. The intent here is obviously good, but we must not fool ourselves and think more severe rules are the only answer. To think that would only do a disservice to what has happened and decrease our chances to actually address the roots of these violent problems.

First of all, this violent and disrespectful nature of our game does not have its roots embedded at the high school level, for it starts much earlier than that. In the lower levels of youth, where skill development and fun should be the primary goals, too many programs are too worried about tryouts and winning.

Too many programs spend a lot of their resources on the “elite minority.” Weekend tournaments including a lot of driving, hotel staying and killing time are the norm way too often. I am sure that these constant weekend excursions have little if anything to do with real hockey skill development. In fact, the ultimate goal of all these tournaments is winning the championship, the biggest trophy and for  the sponsoring team, to make money.

The lack of skill development accomplished by playing tons of games and traveling to the far ends of the Midwest have been documented by many extremely knowledgeable hockey people already, so that is another discussion for another day.

The pressures of winning at these young ages helps foster the disrespect for opponents and the game. Many coaches of young kids stress the same basic concepts: work hard, do not make mistakes, play the body, etc.

Youth hockey should not be “work.” Work comes later in life and is something adults get paid to do or they would not do it. Mistakes are part of the learning process and for a young player not to make mistakes simply means he is not trying to get better. Play the body usually has meant to hit opponents.

Work hard and hit people ... none of this has much to do with skill development but has a lot to do with our current state of affairs.

Too many coaches are confused about hitting and checking. Hitting is trying to knock someone on their butts. Checking is skillful and to be a good checker incorporates a lot of various physical and mental skills. Checking, like so many other fundamental skills, are not being taught these days. Too much time and effort is spent on systems to help win games and hitting opponents is part of those systems.

Checking oftentimes involves physical contact. It should – hockey has always been a physical contact sport. But we don’t see many good checks anymore, just a lot of players flying around as fast as they can trying to hit someone. Young players are simply getting bad information which puts themselves and others in possible harms way as well as takes away the skill development.

Instead of youngsters becoming better hockey players, they hope simply to survive the cuts from teams and the physical trauma associated with trying to win every weekend.

I am certainly in favor of rule changes that will truly help with the safety of our players. But rules pertaining to these areas are already in the books. Checking from behind, boarding and head contact are already rules with various punishments attached. Most good officials try not to dictate the outcome of games and yet at the same time, try their best to call the penalties that occur. This is a balancing act.

Up to this point in time, officials have not called enough of these types of penalties as the rules were. Why do some think the officials will now call more penalties with stiffer rules? Officials are humans and most good officials do not want to impact the outcome of a big game.

More severe punishments for some of these dangerous rule violations may therefore make it harder for officials to actually make the call now. Many of the more serious penalties were not being called enough prior to these changes. And now more severe rules over time are going to do what?

A tight playoff game, a player gets his hands and stick up to an opponent’s head, nothing flagrant. Do you believe that the official will call the five-minute major for head contact or will he maybe call a two-minute high sticking penalty?

This is the reality of these kinds of situations. Stiffer rules are only one part of changing the current state of affairs. These high school players of today grew up looking at stop signs on all players’ backs .... that message has not gotten though apparently.

This regression of our game has happened over time. More severe rule changes are not the big answer. What we have to have is a change in our hockey culture, starting at the youth levels. Skill development over winning; fun over stress and respect over intimidation.

If our kids are allowed to develop skills and have fun in that process, the better players will be the better players, the better teams will be the better teams AND the game will become safer. No player or team can maximize their potential if individual skill development is superseded by winning.

Because of our passion for hockey, we can work together to change this current hockey culture. For the sake of the game and for the safety of the kids that play it, we MUST change the status quo.

These changes MUST start at the youth levels! There can be no other serious solution that addresses the roots of our problems to our game.