ÖRNSKÖLDSVIK, Sweden — Lauren Bellefontaine got here off the ice after a recreation in Sweden’s prime girls’s hockey league and detailed the toll her physique had simply taken.
“I obtained a persist with the collarbone tonight and likewise successful to the top. Undoubtedly some bumps and bruises,” she stated with a smile. “However I’m feeling superb.”
Rising up in Canada, Bellefontaine saved listening to folks ask why there was no hitting in girls’s hockey. It has taken a transfer to northern Sweden for her to find the extra bodily aspect of the game.
In 2022, Sweden grew to become the primary nation to introduce physique checking to its premier girls’s league, bringing its rule e-book nearer to males’s hockey regardless that hockey’s world governing physique doesn’t formally permit the follow due to security considerations. It has opened up a brand new world for girls’s gamers, who say they really feel extra empowered taking part in the sport the best way it was meant.
Swedish hockey officers say the outcomes have been overwhelmingly optimistic: The ladies’s recreation has develop into sooner and extra entertaining whereas concussions, which have been a scourge for the game, have decreased.
Different nations are actually seeking to observe swimsuit, with the PWHL — the skilled girls’s league in North America with a number of the world’s prime gamers — placing checking within the guidelines for its inaugural season final yr.
“It has given us the chance to show we’re bodily, we’re robust and we are able to play similar to the lads’s gamers,” Bellefontaine stated. “It permits us to indicate we are able to — and we’ll.”
Bellefontaine joined MoDo for the beginning of the 2023-24 season. It’s a title-contending group from Örnsköldsvik, a sleepy coastal city some 530 kilometers (330 miles) north of Stockholm — and never removed from the Arctic Circle — whose inhabitants of 30,000 lives and breathes hockey and whose most well-known alumni embrace NHL greats Peter Forsberg, Henrik and Daniel Sedin, and Markus Naslund.
Initially it was one thing of a tradition shock to her.
“I had no prior expertise of hitting in any respect,” the 25-year-old Bellefontaine stated, “and we went proper into the season so it took me some time to get into it … it was robust however now it’s simply enjoyable.”
Safer, too.
Statistics equipped by the Swedish girls’s league present the variety of concussions sustained by gamers has dropped since 2018, when its “Challenge Zero Imaginative and prescient” was launched. There have been 35 reported concussions within the 2018-19 common season, 10 in 2022-23 and 15 in 2023-24. By Jan. 8 this yr, which was approaching the top of the common season, there had been six.
Stopping concussions was the primary driver behind the introduction of checking, as counterintuitive as that will appear. It has pressured gamers to skate with their heads up, growing their ice consciousness.
There have been different advantages of bringing again checking, which was a part of the sport in girls’s hockey in Europe and North America till the mid-Nineteen Eighties however isn’t within the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation’s present rule e-book. Coaches, league officers and followers say the pace of the Swedish recreation has gotten faster, as gamers make smarter and sooner selections.
For a lot of, it restores the steadiness between talent and physicality that’s essential in making the game an entertaining watch.
“It creates some stress within the recreation that you just in any other case don’t get,” stated Luc de Keijzer, a 27-year-old pupil who’s a daily at MoDo video games.
One huge hope is that elevated bodily play makes Sweden extra aggressive on the worldwide stage towards conventional hockey powers like the US, Canada and Finland. Sweden’s girls’s group commonly goes deep in world championships and Olympic Video games however hasn’t received the gold medal at both event.
For some feminine gamers, the largest impact has been to make them really feel extra empowered. That’s as a result of they’re primarily following the identical guidelines as the lads, apart from one key distinction: hits on open ice — when gamers are skating freely away from the boards — are forbidden in girls’s hockey.
“We’re making an attempt to shut the hole between males’s and ladies’s hockey, so that is a technique we’re doing it — to have related guidelines as they do,” stated Alexie Guay, one other Canadian taking part in for MoDo. “It’s not as intense and there are completely different guidelines nonetheless — I don’t know if there will likely be combating in girls’s hockey sooner or later — however we’re undoubtedly closing the hole and I feel it’s a cool factor.”
In response to analysis by Lund College in Sweden, 88% of the 159 gamers from the league who responded to a questionnaire stated they have been in favor of checking.
Jared Cipparone, the coach of MoDo’s girls’s group, stated he hasn’t encountered any resistance from his gamers about checking.
“Everybody was enthusiastic about it,” stated Cipparone, who can also be from Canada. “The primary yr was trial and fireplace for a lot of, however final yr and this yr you see the importance it’s made within the recreation and I’ve solely heard good issues about it.”
At MoDo’s house recreation towards HV71 at Hagglunds Enviornment in early January, a MoDo participant was virtually knocked off her skates by a full-body hit. Many others have been smashed into the boards however went on with the sport. There have been no roughing penalties and positively no brawling.
The 5-foot-7 Bellefontaine, who describes herself as “fairly small,” has needed to adapt her recreation. She stated she trains more durable, watches what she eats to “bulk up a bit of bit” and is making use of the sauna in her residence for post-match restoration.
“I’m undoubtedly squeezing my core a bit of extra,” she stated. “Earlier than, I wouldn’t even anticipate to be hit so now it’s head on a swivel, all the time trying, all the time watching, and simply being able to take successful. You need to ensure you’re not ready to jeopardize your self.
“It’s undoubtedly modified the best way we play and made us higher gamers.”
USA Hockey and Hockey Canada don’t permit checking in women and girls’s hockey. In Sweden, physique checking is a part of the foundations for girls and boys beginning on the age of 12. League officers say being educated so early prepares gamers for when they’re older.
MoDo fan Marie Johansson stated her 18-year-old daughter, Amanda, began with checking from age 12, initially whereas taking part in with boys.
“All dad and mom are apprehensive about their kids getting injured,” Johansson stated, “however once they be taught to do the checking, they prepare lots, they discover ways to maintain their heads up excessive, and he or she learnt keep away from accidents. I don’t assume as a result of she’s a woman I’ve been extra apprehensive than if she’d been a boy.”
Morgan Johansson, an official who helped to launch the Zero Imaginative and prescient mission, stated he has shared data with the IIHF and the PWHL concerning the results the rule change has had on the Swedish league. Norwegian and Danish leagues have additionally contacted him.
Final yr, the IIHF had PWHL officers in North America define the league’s guidelines on checking and officiating in a possible first step to switch its rulebook and supply a brand new customary at worldwide competitions, league vp of hockey operations Jayna Hefford stated.
Contacted by the AP, the IIHF stated its rulebook “doesn’t prohibit aggressive physique contact between gamers” however famous its workers was working with its membership “to make clear the interpretation of this half in girls’s hockey.”
As for the Swedes, they’re glad to have made the daring step that others are beginning to observe.
“We’re form of a trailblazer relating to girls’s hockey in difficult the previous constructions that stated, ‘Girls can’t,’” stated Angelica Lindeberg, operations supervisor for the Swedish league. “Now we are saying, in fact they will. We’re very pleased with that.”
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AP Hockey Author John Wawrow contributed.
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AP girls’s hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey