It's natural for parents or guardians new to minor hockey or hockey in general to have questions, whether they're about rules, equipment, registration, benefits, safety or something else. Hockey Canada's hockey parent FAQ offers answers to some of the most common inquiries. Do you have a question that isn't answered? Submit your question and we will do our best to answer it.

In a previous prospective study, the risk of concussion and all injury was more than threefold higher among Pee Wee ice hockey players ages 11—12 years in a league that allows bodychecking than among those in a league that does not. We examined whether two years of bodychecking experience in Pee Wee influenced the risk of concussion and other injury among players in a Bantam league ages 13—14 compared with Bantam players introduced to bodychecking for the first time at age We estimated incidence rate ratios IRRs for injury and for concussion. There were injuries 51 concussions among the Bantam hockey players who had bodychecking experience in Pee Wee and injuries 49 concussions among those without such experience.

A young player with an affinity for a particular sport shows early signs of promise — maybe as young as six or seven years old — and then the race is on for that player to get to the highest level possible as quickly as possible with the ultimate goal being a college scholarship or perhaps even a professional career. All it takes is one kid from one team to make the jump from B to A, A to AA or AA to AAA, accompanied by all the talk among the families and the related social media bragging for everyone to start talking about moving up. And it continues right up through pee wees, bantams, midgets and all the way to the junior level. But with hockey, the alphabet letters always seem to be there, and unfortunately too often parents and players get caught up in what I like to call alphabet soup — being more concerned about what level their team is instead of focusing on enjoying the experience, improving and getting quality coaching.

Minor hockey is an umbrella term for amateur ice hockey which is played below the junior age level. Players are classified by age, with each age group playing in its own league. The rules, especially as it relates to body contact, vary from class to class.