"Dangerous" players -- when/how do you step in?

[Guest]

Leagues have their own "step up" system of working with clubs and coaches to sanction/suspend dangerous players. (Side question: do you think it's enough?)

First how would you define a dangerous player -- whether intentionally being a risk to others or him/herself or more through lack of skill making them dangerous, like not having the skating skills to check or receive a check safely?

As a coach, what do you do above and beyond league sanctions/suspensions, if anything, to deal with dangerous players? As a parent, what do you do if your kid is constantly getting injured or injuring other kids?

What message do you/your coach give to players and parents at beginning of season about repeat behaviors and how do you help remediate kids so they can change unsafe behaviors and stay on the team?

And if a kid is suspended, what do you require of them as proof that they won't continue to be a danger? Anything? Or just let them back on the ice with suspension time served? (Not sure if the leagues require any re-training of kids before coming back from a suspension.)

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[Guest]

What is the system leagues have? My son has gone from pee wee house to 18AA and the same out of control kids who were hitting as 12 year olds are still hitting the same way today from behind and boarding. They have suspensions galore and they still played every season.

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[Guest]

No such thing. The only way a kid gets thrown out of the league is if they commit a crime on the ice.

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[Guest]

High school leagues have progressive suspension systems when it relates to major penalties and fighting but as far as I'm aware the local youth leagues do not.

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[Guest]

USA Hockey has progressive suspension, but I believe they only register major penalties, not the thousands of 2 and 10s kids teams rack up over a season and kids a playing "career" in DVHL.

The problem, as it's suggested, is that making 2 and 10s part of progressive suspensions is that then officials won't call them as often, not wanting to take kids off the ice.

But to be clear a 2 and 10 is generally for a check or incident that could have potentially caused grievous harm to another child.  We can't be talking about concussion prevention out of one side of the mouth and giving a slap on the wrist for dangerous acts on the ice at the same time.

So what's the solution? And why won't DVHL do what it needs to do to keep the game as low risk -- if not risk free -- as possible?

What sort of system of suspensions or what kind of remediation (proof the kid/coach acknowledges the problem and is doing something about it) would you like to see?

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[Guest]

Not sure either of these situations help with controlling the kids.

I was working the box one game and overheard a ref tell our coach after the game that he held off giving a kid another penalty because it knew it was going to be his 5th(or whatever the threshold is) penalty. Kid was mouthing off to the other team as he was going to box and could have gotten a misconduct, but the ref felt bad that he would be suspended for a game.

Another time I was getting the scoresheet ready before the game and was talking to the coach of the other team and he told me he was suspended for this one. He said that there was a scuffle at the end of their game the day before, with the kids from his team being the main aggressors. The ref said to him, I could get 3 of your players for throwing punches which would get them suspended, but I don't really want to do that, how about you get suspended for 1 game instead. That team had already had a bunch of penalties during the game so the ref was able to call enough roughings and misconducts at the end to push them over 15 which got the coach suspended.

I've also overheard refs debating giving a fighting vs roughing, not because they felt bad about them getting kicked out of game and suspended, but because of the paperwork they have to fill out with a fighting major. The one guy was like, I really don't feel like doing that, lets going with roughing.

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