Mike Milbury on the Checking Rule Change

USA Hockey Magazine has an article by Mike Milbury on the proposed rule change that will delay the introduction of bodychecking until Bantams.  Now Mike is no shrinking violet, as an NHL defenseman he racked up over 1500 PIMs, but he supports the change in the piece titled Changing The Checking Age Does Not Soften Our Sport.

Here are a couple of highlights:

When we get kids at 11 and 12 years of age, some of them have vast disparities in height and weight and even degrees of passion about the sport. Some of them can become overwhelmed when it comes to the physical play. In our rush to introduce checking we run the risk of losing kids who are on the bubble and may not have developed their bodies to the point where they can effectively give and take a check.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the physical part of the game, but I believe the introduction of physical play into the game should come at a deliberate pace. It starts with teaching body contact — rubbing, bumping, edging out and gaining proper positioning on an opponent — rather than focusing on hard hits.

And Mike brings it home with this closing appeal:

This rule change proposal isn’t about checking being removed; it’s about checking being improved. And for the good of our sport, this checking model needs to be adopted when it comes up for a vote.

More of our recent coverage of the upcoming vote can be found here.




You should follow me on twitter here.