As the Edmonton Minor Hockey Association pioneers a program designed to reduce injuries in the game, the program itself is taking its share of bumps as it develops.
The EMHA is in its third season using the Injury Prevention Respect Point program. In a nutshell, its goal is to make the game safer for the thousands of youngsters who play hockey in and around the Edmonton area.
Every division of Edmonton Minor Hockey has a threshold for penalty minutes that teams can accumulate per game. Stay under that threshold and your team gets a point. Teams are required to get points in half of their games through each of the three trimesters of a minor hockey season.
Those that fail to get points aren’t eligible to play in tournaments.
"A woman out of the University of Calgary and a couple of doctors did research on injuries to players and they felt that the decrease of penalty minutes also decreased the injuries," explained EMHA president Chris Hurley.
While the program is a great one on paper, some of the teams affected by the rules have their share of gripes with it. Ryan Dhanhoo is the team manager of the Edmonton Northeast Zone Eagles peewee team. The Eagles were scheduled to play in a Christmas tournament hosted by the Hawks Athletic Club, that ran from Dec. 27-29.
After committing between $750 and $780 to play in the tournament in October, they found out on Dec. 23 that they were ineligible to play in it, as they had failed to make the points quota.
"We won’t see a penny of that (money) back," Dhanhoo said.
"It’s a seriously flawed system because … peewee is only 11-and 12-year-olds (playing) and we’re having games reffed by 14-, 15-and 16-year-old kids. There are penalties for hooking and tripping and you know, eventually they do add up."
Dhanhoo said he’d like to see minor penalties omitted from the IPRP system, with the emphasis being placed on major penalties.
"There’s a two-minute penalty called a two-minute technical if a player goes to a referee and says, ‘Hey, that goal shouldn’t have counted, the goalie was interfered.’ The ref can give him two minutes for coming up to talk to him."
Hurley said that the program is also designed to ensure that the rules and refs are respected the whole way through a game.
"It’s just to get the kids back to the idea that you can’t go to the last minute of a hockey game and get all upset and go loose because now you’re going to cost your team going to a tournament. That’s where most of the injuries happen, is in the last couple of minutes."
Heidi Glueck, the tournament director for the Hawks Athletic Club, had to scramble last month to find replacement teams when she heard about the Eagles’ situation. The atom Hawks were also unable to play in their own tourney after they came up short in the points department as well.
"We had to shuffle the original tournament plan. It inconvenienced everyone," she said, adding that she thought there were teams still in the tournament who didn’t have enough points.
Hurley admitted that the administration of the program is still being smoothed out.
"There was a couple of teams that it was very severe, they were well over those points and that’s where that grey area comes in," he said. "You can make an exception for someone who’s out one point, but how do you explain that to the team that’s out by 10 points?
"It doesn’t feel great. Some of the things we have to work on is a time-line so there’s sufficient time to warn them and let them know way ahead of time that, ‘Sorry you’re not going to be able to go,’ or, ‘You are going to be able to go.’ "
Both the Hawks and the Eagles executive would like to see major changes to the program.
"Do for one, do for all or just don’t do it," Glueck said. "Reassess it and maybe redesign the program."
With different thresholds on penalty minutes for every division of minor hockey, Hurley said the opportunity for confusion on the ins and outs of the program runs high.
"I think we need to get the information out to the coaches better, and the families. A lot of the coaches are told during the season how the program works but a lot of the parents really don’t quite understand it and the players don’t, unless the coach tells them," he said.
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