Minnesota Hockey Coach in Chief Hal Tearse walks you through a series of on ice drills designed specifically for Bantam age players. Hal also shows game video examples of legal and illegal body checking.
Hello Coach Hal, as part of a youth sports safety initiative called TeamSafe™ I teach a sports safety course to health care professionals as well as sports coaches. May I use portions of this great video? Thank you.
No, if you've never played hockey you will play house league which should NOT have checking in it. This should only be allowed for the higher rep levels of hockey.
Alexander Crossen No it doesn't, he's never played hockey before do you think he's going to play AA or AAA right out of the gate? Use your head bud, no body checking at the entry levels of hockey Alexander. Give real advice or don't say anything.
Good drills, but it's important to use proper terminology. When he's telling the players to use "swizzles," what he means and what he demos aren't swizzles at all. Swizzles are a figure-skating move where the feet go out and in together. It has very limited application in hockey. What he wants is a backward stride, or "C-cuts."
Taking checking out of pee wee is a joke! you've clearly not played the game in 40 years judging by your opinion. hitting is part of the game, yes big blow up hits happen but the younger they are the less damage they do. Eric Lindros skated his entire youth career with his head down didn't matter ( watched him - played with him) and then because nobody could hit him he got to the show and guess what happened? You know the story and it's no different, the older you leave hitting out of the game the more dangerous it gets. I don't agree with any studies that say it dramatically decreases injury because those studies are not accurate I've read them, they're biased. Let's not lose site on the fact that hitting has been part of the game forever and there haven't been issues, all of a sudden as a society we've gotten soft, we've gotten to protective and the argument that we've advanced is ridiculous and lands in the same area as "EVERYONE GETS A MEDAL" mentality. I've even heard the "Mom crew" who runs youth hockey up here talk about not keeping score until after Atom hockey!!!! Can you believe that? Stop the madness, stop advocating and trying to change OUR GAME with your opinions because they're dangerous and you don't even know it - You have young men learning to hit on each other, terrible!
Lots of concussions, we're learning they matter. 2nd highest concussion rate after football, and enough former players have donated their brains to show the effects. In the old days they used to never wear helmets in the NHL, too "man" for that, now they do. Then a few years ago they never used visors, now they do. None of that is about being weak. If you think the game is all about hitting, you're wrong, and always were wrong.
