Atom was 8 years ago for me but we definately had set positions for the skaters - forwards and defence. My personal opinion is that while it's time to begin teaching the kids positional hockey they are also way too young to be locked into one position for the entire year (or the rest of their years). They will develop better skills overall if they get to play different positions so at some point during the season try to find a way to move them around. Tournaments, if you have uneven numbers on a team (for line combinations) etc. are both great ways to do this.
Regardless of if they are locked in or not when your HC makes his/her call, try to run drills each practice where they get to play both positions, or at least experience components of both positions. For instance a drill that involves the defence carrying the puck and attacking while forwards backcheck etc. It's important for the players to develop both offensive and defensive skills.
Best success I had was at the Bantam level and we had 7 D and 8 F (by their evaluated positions) so the math didn't work out for lines. We asked for volunteers for a D to play F which was going to happen regardless to make the lines work out. A couple of them did and we tried them at F. One of them really clicked, turns out they loved forward, and the line ended up being our best line on the team.
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