An 8 year old player out of Detroit has just received a major suspension, what almost assuredly has to be the first such infraction of his young hockey career.
A video has surfaced on social media that shows an incident from an Under-8 hockey tournament that was under the watchful eye of the Amateur Athletic Union, and unsurprisingly given the content in this video it has taken the hockey world by storm. In the video we see Brandon Jonkhans, who is just 7 years of age, taking a very ugly hit from behind along the end boards, one that we now know has caused the young man a rather serious concussion. This is a very serious matter given how fragile the brains of young children are, and although this is obviously an abnormality in hockey at this level it is without question an extremely dangerous play.
For those of you who have yet to see the hit, here is the video accompanied by a message from Jonkhans' mother.
According to the message published by Meghan Jonkhans, the boy's mother, the boy delivering the hit was initially suspended for two games but that was later waived off when that boy's father complained to the AAU. Now however it appears as though upon further review the boy delivering the hit has been suspended for 5 games, a truly major suspension for play at this level. It is a tough call to make because you would be hard pressed to argue that an 8 year old child had any intent to injure, or even that he was intending to hit the opposing player at all, and I have no doubt that there will be angry people on both sides of this debate regardless of what the final outcome is here.
Perhaps the scariest part of this incident however was the fact that Jonkhans continued to play in the tournament in spite of his injury. It was not until days later upon his return to school that he began to show signs of the injury he had suffered as a result of this collision.
“Honestly, it didn’t even cross my mind,” Meghan said as per The Hockey News. “I had never had a concussion myself, so I assumed he would have some immediate symptoms of that and he didn’t. Had I known what I know, he most definitely would have not been playing.”
At the end of the day I feel bad for everyone involved here and I hope both of these young men make a full recovery, learn some valuable lessons, and continue to enjoy the sport of hockey moving forward.
