Stick handling and poke checking, you see a big difference in beginner adults (often in beginner children too). I admit, I have seen 2 exceptions to this, but that's out of dozens. It's simply unfair to make beginners put their dominant hand on the bottom, they have a far tougher time, generally speaking. I cannot mention the number of right handed people who are otherwise competent players, but have huge problems with stickhandling, even after 4-5 years of playing. This just usually doesn't happen with right handed people who shoot LH, again, I have seen 1 exception to this.
Use your freaking brains, people. If you are strongly right hand dominant, you are less flexible, dexterous and strong with your left arm. Think of it, do you want the more flexible, stronger and hand associated with fine motor movement at the top or bottom? There's also neurological sense behind this, as a large majority of right handed people are left brained, get it now?
Here are links in advance, go read and learn. http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/split.html http://www.nutramed.com/brain/rightleft.htm "Damage or disease in the left hemisphere shows up in the right side of the body and visa versa. The left hemisphere tends to be dominant in terms of hand use and language storage in about 92% of humans. You determine dominance by watching which hand holds a pen and does more of the fine motor skills. The dominant side of the body also tends to be larger than the non-dominant side. About 4% of humans have right hemisphere dominance and another 4% are in the middle with more or less symmetrical hemispheric function.
The human hand is remarkably adaptable and the brain systems that control hand movements are more remarkable. Human hands hold tools, gesture, express feelings and meanings. Two hands work together in most tasks. This means that the two hemispheres work together by sending signals back and forth through a massive bundle of wires, the corpus callosum. In normal people, the left and right hemispheres form integrated operating systems that are often tightly coordinated as in walking, running, and tool use. Clumsy people are less coordinated and some have distinct difficulty achieving left and right cooperation.
The dominant hand leads the nondominant hand by 15 to 30 milli-seconds when coordinated movements are performed."
Is that clear enough? Not to say you can't succeed with the strong hand on the bottom, it's just a good bit tougher to do so for most people.
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Check out some NHL highlight videos and you'll see what I mean. Lecavalier is an excellent example.
