Hockey Canada to make smaller ice surfaces mandatory for youngest kids’ games
Hockey Canada says it will make it mandatory that children getting their first introduction to the game play on reduced-size ice surfaces instead of full-sized rinks.
The organization which governs amateur hockey has been recommending half-ice, or cross-ice, for its initiation programs for five and six-year-olds for over three decades.
A number of provincial amateur hockey bodies already require rinks be partitioned into smaller surfaces for games for their youngest players.
But Paul Carson, Hockey Canada’s vice-president of membership development, said there are still holdouts where beginners play their games on full-sized rinks.