By, Frank Mills, Women’s Hockey Scout
If you’re like me, you were excited when the PWHL announced rules that would allow checking, under specific restraints, upon their launch in 2024. The new league has some pretty smart folks running it, and they knew that they had to take steps to make the game as exciting as possible, within reason, for the players and fans.
The relaxed checking rules allowed a level of physicality not typically seen in the women’s game. Well-timed rub-outs, scrums in front of the net, and body contact around the puck have always been a part of the women’s hockey at the elite levels, but with the new professional league, we saw real body checking combined with the highest caliber of skill, and a lot of us were there for it. Although the new rules were not that much different from those in the IIHF, the interpretation of them was to not penalize players for making clean hits.
In crafting guidelines that were generally similar to those in the NHL, the league stated that checking is allowed when players are moving in the same direction (no opposite-directional force) or are making an attempt to play the puck. Hits along the boards are okay, open-ice hits and hits from behind are not. A stationary player is allowed to stand their ground. Just like in today’s NHL, any hit that seems to target the head results in serious consequences.
This policy, although very similar to that of the NHL, follows closely to that established by the SDHL, the top professional women’s league in Sweden. At the start of the 2022-23 season, the SDHL introduced body-checking to make the game more entertaining, and, get this, to reduce concussions. The SDHL’s reasoning was that concussions come from unexpected contact, and allowing checking would make players more aware on the ice and would force them to play with their heads up. Concussions have gone down dramatically in the SDHL, and Swedish hockey officials are so excited that they’ve changed the rules to allow checking all the way down to age 12.
Experts in the field of concussions don’t all agree. The University of Ottawa’s Dr. Kristian Goulet has called on Hockey Canada to raise the age of bodychecking from 13 to 15 in boys hockey. Other researchers are asking for the age to be raised to 18. Countless studies, all conducted mostly on male subjects, correlate body contact with increased injury and danger of concussion. Even a casual observer of the NHL can tell you that hitting is generally down, and that there is a focus on protecting players from injury, especially concussions.
The statistics show that PWHL players are hitting, but not as much as their male counterparts. The league leaders, who averaged just over two hits per game, were Toronto’s Renata Fast and New York’s Abby Roque, now of Montreal. The Winnipeg Jets’ Luke Schenn, who finished 5th in total hits last year, averaged just under four per game. The PWHL’s Boston Fleet led the league with 535 hits last year, which over a 30 game season averages to just under 18 hits per game. The NHL’s Florida Panthers, conversely, led the league last year with an average just under 30 hits per game. So the women are hitting, but about half as much as the men.
Funnily enough, the team with the fewest number of hits for the season, the Minnesota Frost, are two-time Walter Cup Champions. From a tactical consideration, this may be a key difference in the men’s and women’s games.
My first reaction to seeing checking successfully launched in the PWHL was to think that this would immediately change the NCAA game, but this has not come to pass. The NCAA’s Ty Halpin told the Toronto Star this spring that bodychecking was not a direction that “the women’s college game is going.” In speaking to several college coaches this summer, their reaction was similar: they’re worried about their players’ health and long-term well-being. They also don’t feel that the transition to checking in the PWHL is such a great leap that it’s necessary to change the college game for the purpose of accommodation. College players joining the PWHL have seemed to do just fine making the transition.
As a youth hockey coach, I’ve attended many training sessions under the American Development Model (ADM), which I believe does a good job of introducing the concepts of physical contact and angling at a young age for boys and girls. Still, many coaches believe that if checking were introduced earlier, it would better prepare players’ bodies and minds for the physical game. Anyone who has watched a 14U minor team skating in a spring tournament and being allowed to check for the first time will understand. The kids are trying to blow each other up, and no one knows how to take a hit. Many people are advocating for an approach like the one adopted in Sweden, to allow young players to get used to checking when they are still learning the other fundamentals of the game.
Hockey has evolved a great deal in the last 150 or so years since the game’s early beginnings on frozen ponds and rivers. A century ago, there was no such thing as a forward pass, so players had to play a rugby-style game of backward passes and individual rushes. In the NHL, hard body checking has always been a hallmark of the game. Watch highlight reels of hits from just a few years ago and you’ll see unpenalized players targeting the head, making no attempt to play the puck, and leaving their feet to blast an opponent. Neuroscience and good common sense have forced us to rethink this kind of play, and the NHL has focused a great deal of attention on making checking clean, while still maintaining the integrity of the game. We know a lot more about concussions than we used to, and we understand that children are especially vulnerable. There is too much development going on in their brains to risk permanent damage.
So, will checking in the PWHL trickle down to youth hockey? I don’t think so, at least not in the form of policy and rule-changing. There is too much liability and neuroscientific research for either USA Hockey or Hockey Canada to make a fundamental shift in policy. Will this give countries like Sweden a competitive advantage over North American players? Not really, because European players will need to play in the NCAA for a shot to be drafted into the PWHL, at least for the time being. Perhaps the Swedish experiment will force the conversation to broaden, and with continued research and scientific development, a better understanding of this paradigm will develop. In the meantime, I say teach body contact, angling, and impact awareness, raise the compete level for all players, and when they make it to the pros, then they can throw the body.