RealAudio 3.0 14.4

The boys' hockey tournament, Minnesota's biggest high school sporting event, opens this week in St. Paul. The tournament comes two weeks after the first girls' hockey tournament and the contrast could not be more striking. No body checking is allowed in the girls' tournament. Boys, on the other hand, can use their body anywhere on the rink to slam into whomever has the puck. Rink-wide checking has been the rule in boys' hockey for 25 years. Checking is popular with fans, but critics say it should be banned because of the rising rate of injury.

NINETEEN-YEAR-OLD BEN PEYTON from Edina remembers seeing his teammate pass the puck to him.

Peyton: ...And as I was looking back, I took a check, and it was a little high, and it broke my neck.

Peyton says the check on him last year in a Twin Cities hockey game was nothing out of the ordinary. He says he'd taken hits like it many times. This time he knew there was a difference.

Peyton: ...Well, I couldn't feel anything to tell you the truth. Before I hit the ice, I knew I was paralyzed. It was really a scary feeling.

Peyton underwent two operations to fuse vertebrae. He spent two months in a hospital intensive care unit. Once out, he was in three months of intensive physical therapy. A year later, Ben Peyton is walking with the aid of leg brace. His father, John Peyton, says it's miracle. John Peyton is a former high school and college hockey player, a longtime youth hockey coach and an avid fan who can recite hockey names and numbers the way some people remember family birthdays. Peyton says the body checking allowed in boys hockey is an outgrowth of what has happened to the sport starting at the top.

John Peyton: ...What sells to the NHL these days is violence and that's what the average fan wants to see, and the kids see that and the example is very poor.

The body checking rule for boys' hockey is simple. A player can use his body to try get the puck away from the opposing player. In other words, players can't just willy-nilly slam into an opponent, unless the opponent has the puck.

A conversation with hockey players about body checking at a Twin Cities high school hockey game reveals an alarming level of blood lust, until one stops to remember these are teenage boys. They are responding to my microphone and the rules of boy culture do not permit them to show anything but bravado in a crowd.

I like to check a lot, cheap stuff gets you hurt... I think it's fun, make 'em feel like an ass in front of their family... One of the best parts of the game. Biggest reasons I play hockey. I think when someone tries to check me, it's a shot at my character. It makes me work hard. In a way, it would still be a good sport (if checking were taken away)... more scoring. Look at the women, it would take a lot from the game.

By coincidence, one of the players, who was not asked for his name, claims he's the hockey player who checked Ben Peyton, breaking his neck. As the circle of players begins to dissolve and they turn their attention to their friends and the game out on the ice, the young man stands, walks around and sits down on my left. The bravado is gone. He wants to say something else about his check on Ben Peyton.

...His head was kinda down.

And there in one phrase, "his head was kinda down," the young man has put his finger on the advice given constantly to hockey players. In an attempt to try to limit catastrophic injuries, the players are told to keep their heads up, so their head and spine won't take the brunt of the blow of their own momentum or a body check sends them crashing into the boards. The advice doesn't cut it with Janny Brust, director of research for Allina Foundation, part of one of Minnesota's largest health care companies. Brust's two sons played hockey for years. She says body checking in boys hockey should be banned because it's causing too many injuries.

Brust: ...Kids eleven to fifteen, we documented a third injured during the season, and at the high school level, the rate is much higher.

Brust: ...Sure they like giving checks, but they don't like getting checks. If you look to the girls, the sport is enjoyable. Why are we promoting violence, it's hurt us tremendously.

John Bartz directs the boys' and girls' state hockey tournaments for the Minnesota State High School League. He defends body checking. He doesn't agree with critics who want the rule changed back to what it was. 25 years ago, boys could check players with the puck only in their offensive zone, not rink-wide. But as he defends the rule change, Bartz, a former hockey player, coach, and referee, pauses and recalls his enjoyment of the just-ended girls' hockey tournament.

Bartz: ...I'll tell you, it's more fun to watch, more finesse, more skating, no use of the stick like in the other programs. But there would be people who would say, hey, it's part of the game. I'd say coaches would be the first to protest.

The league and most school districts in an effort to control the intensity that can lead to injuries now have three referees on the ice, up from two in the old days. Bartz says with good officiating, the behavior of the players can be controlled and the game made safe.