You should message Bernsie. He is there for you.

Isn't shakes the King of No Contact Hockey around here?

We've made that drive. Only an hour. We'd do it if we needed to.

When I was playing, I was unaware of any no-check rec leagues. House league would be the closest to a rec league, but it definitely had legal checking Pee-Wee and older.

Things may very well have changed, though.

As a partial aside, it's not so much the legal checking and contact that causes danger in hockey. It's the poorly administered checks and those who don't properly receive them/prepare themselves. Our club mandated that everybody attend the checking clinic. You could tell when clubs were too lax on that, because it would get dicey out there. Either that or there were just a ton of jerk kids, which is entirely possible.

That said, it's fair if anybody wants to avoid checking. Just offering my experience.

It's mainly been started for people that want to play but don't want to or can't risk the injury. Kids who get 2 or 3 concussions and don't want to stop playing, stuff like that.

Maybe you can come over and tell my 15 year old that's what he is when we tell him he'll probably never play again.

Truth there....when my son played in the IL High School league, the Spring season brought in a lot of less experienced players because it was cheaper. You also had a lot of U16 players that would play down with our HS club, so the skill level was greatly varied.

We had a defender absolutely plow a kid out cold. It looked horrible, but it was a clean check. Kid was playing the puck on the center line tried carrying it and stupidly put his head down. There was video after....totally clean play regardless of the kid getting absolutely blasted.

1st year, my son learned very quickly that it was a different skill level and you don't try to dance the puck over the center line

Oh yeah, spring league was notorious for that. We'd get guys on our teams who didn't want to play varsity hockey - they'd rather play Central States club for some reason, usually the result of them not making AAA. Of course, AAA got watered down and these kids wound up exactly where they belonged on the spring teams. I remember it being really elite with only TI and CYA to speak of around here, then Mission and Chill got involved and suddenly everybody thought they were a AAA player. So naturally, Central States became a phenomenon for the kids who couldn't make AAA. Those kids that showed up for spring league and then went back to club for the Fall never really fit in with the rest of the team. Even our underdeveloped 16 and 17 year old brains knew these kids thought too highly of themselves.