Headlines: Youth Bodychecking

There were two interesting news bits on bodychecking in youth hockey on Friday:

• Brendan Shanahan comes out against checking in youth hockey [Calgary Herald]
• Peter Laviolette talks about his sons who are bantam and peewee players, and why he thinks checking can wait [NHL Network]

I liked this quote from the Shanahan article:

Most NHL players are born in the early months of the year. Why? Because they come up through the ranks of a system where kids born late in the year are physically disadvantaged compared with older, bigger, January-born babies, as pointed out in the bestselling book Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell.

Of course, his answer to the no check critics is Bryan Marchment, which is pretty cool.  I'm going to pick up the Malcolm Gladwell book, as I've heard it mentioned a number of times now.