(CNN) -- When you consider that only about one in 4,000 youth hockey players will ever make it to the professional ranks, does putting the 3,999 other bodies -- and specifically, heads -- at risk by allowing bodychecking make sense? That provocative question is raised in an analysis published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Taking the bodychecking out of hockey is akin to taking tackling out of football. It provokes the ire of sports purists, who might argue that you rob the sport of what makes it essentially hockey or football. But the bodychecking argument -- specifically, banning it among all but elite hockey players aged 16 or older, according to the analysis -- is rooted in emerging science about how concussion affects the youth brain, compared with the adult brain.