Helmet Lab releases its first ratings for youth hockey helmets

The latest ratings from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab aim to help young people select the best headgear for hat tricks. 

On Dec. 16, the lab released its first-ever ratings for youth hockey helmets. Using the lab’s Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk (STAR) framework, 33 helmets were given a star rating from 0 to 5, with the latter being the top performing products. 

“It includes every helmet we could get our hands on, including some that are no longer being manufactured but that players might still be wearing,” said Steve Rowson, the lab's director. “The goal is simply to provide moms and dads and other stakeholders in the youth hockey community an independent resource so they can make an informed decision and purchase a helmet in the context of impact protection.”

Ten helmets earned a five-star rating and six earned four stars. A complete list of helmets rated, including available advertised retail prices, is available at the Helmet Lab’s webpage.

In 2015, the lab released its first ratings for varsity, or adult-size, hockey helmets and soon after hockey helmet performance reached new heights. Rowson said the response to those ratings helped motivate this new research. 

“Turns out the people most interested in the varsity ratings were the parents of youth players,” said Rowson, who is also a professor of biomedical engineering. “So the lab initiated this work to make sure the people who really want that data can have it.”

Rowson said the ratings are especially important because there is more than double the number of youth hockey players compared to adults. There are about 800,000 youth players combined in the United States and Canada, according to each country’s national ice hockey organizations, USA Hockey and Hockey Canada. There are also about 275,000 players throughout Europe, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation. 

Currently, the Hockey Equipment Certification Council is the only widely used benchmark for hockey helmets, both youth and adult. The council doesn’t produce performance-based ratings, but rather certifies hockey helmets meet certain American Society for Testing and Materials safety standards.

To complete the new ratings system, Virginia Tech researchers leveraged existing literature on impact exposures in youth hockey and utilized some of the equipment they had previously used for youth football helmet ratings. This included a youth-sized test dummy and testing at lower impact energies associated with the youth game compared to the adult version. 

Youth hockey helmets are the 13th sport or industry-specific safety headgear for which the Helmet Lab has generated comprehensive, publicly available ratings since it debuted ratings 15 years ago. During that time, the lab has developed a reputation as both an independent consumer guide and a road map for industry to develop safer products. This summer, the lab even had to update its ratings for bicycle, varsity football, and youth football helmets as a result of those helmets’ growth in safety performance. 

Rowson said that while the primary goal of the research is to empower individuals to make the best choice in headgear, they also always hope to empower the helmet industry and collective sports culture to move toward safer products.