[BigFlameDog]

I'll jump in. I have been heavily involved in female hockey for 12 years and have 2 daughters who played local MHA and elite.

There are valid physiological and practical reasons for not allowing "full" contact in female hockey. The people who have issues with it usually happen to have a female player in the 10 percentile with the neck strength/build to handle it and manages to make it through U15 AA coed relatively unscathed (I know plenty who didn't).

Beyond that, once girls hit the elite stream (AA, AAA, Prep) there is plenty of contact and your fooling yourself if you think there isn't. The board play and net front is similar to coed, just missing the boomers which cause the whiplash that "most" of our girls want to stay away from. If you allowed FULL contact some girls would excel but a lot would simply get hurt and mostly head and neck.

Generally speaking, outside of the elite stream, the talent gap would only see a lot of less talented and physically weaker girls get hurt. Also generally speaking the girls don't play the hack and whack like you would see in the coed side if hitting was taken away. Years of getting called for it probably slows it down.

Our game is growing at the association level but even with the successful programs you would see A players on the ice with B and in smaller communities there may be a C or two thrown in.

At the national or pro level where you have more evenly matched and physically trained women, you could probably (and I think one day likely) allow more, modified contact, along the boards etc. But we have to limit the whiplash high impact type hits.