So, I'm going to put this out there, I have talked to a lot of people on both sides of this issue; I'm a volunteer with a minor hockey association, a past board of director member and a coach, and the I have a problem with the decision. When I asked more than one of the Doctors about their study, the question I asked was about how they qualify the injuries that they reported on. To be specific, how was it determined that an injury was a direct result of body contact? The short answer is...they don't know. It could be a body contact unrelated injury in their data.
I also asked what qualifies it as an injury? And how many teams did they follow through the year, at games, at practices etc. Another short answer...they extrapolate from the data they do have. I feel the data they do have isn't comprehensive enough yet to determine that there is more injuries to PW players strictly due to contact (as well, all they are really doing is moving 'the problem' to the Bantam age group)
I read the HA news release and all it had to actually address the problem was a short " ...we encourage PW coaches to teach proper body contact in practice situations."
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