Calling every little nudge or brief hold (by brief, I mean less than a second) slows the game down and frustrates players and coaches.

Refs just need to keep things from getting out of control, not controlling every little thing.

I just don’t want the game to continue to favor the offense like pro basketball has done by making zone defense illegal. The game is perfect and only subtle changes may be needed here and there, but this is the game and it’s been great forever – let’s preserve that.

The only hopeful outcome in terms of slowing or deterring a dodger with a poke check is to poke him in the stomach and knock the wind out of him or maybe get a piece of wrist.  In either case, the result is still not a takeaway, just causing enough physical hurt to slow the guy down (gee, the same as a cross check). 
Offset heads, pinched sticks, waxy mesh, crackdowns on big hits to prevent concussions… rules have evolved to make defense increasingly more difficult.  Now we want to re-emphasize hands together to give defenders less stability and leverage when hitting?  Just like in women’s lacrosse, any rule changes or points-of-emphasis we discuss should be with an eye toward both promoting finesse over physical play that could potentially injure and not continuing to make life increasingly difficult for just the defense.

And you’re right, it wouldn’t speed up the game by itself.  But I do believe that it would allow fast teams to play fast, meaning a good shot could come much earlier in the possession than will all the crosschecking we see now.

And if someone used your approach to non-crosschecking defense, a team would really only have to develop good passing skills and the ability to cut and score… but isn’t that a great aspect of the game?  I’d take less dodge, move it around again, dodge, repeat and more of that any day.

It doesn’t stop it from happening, but it opens the door for fast teams to play fast if they want to.  And I’m all for that.

The other problem is this: will it actually speed up the game? If by speed up the game you mean increase scoring, then yes. Lacrosse will resemble the NBA after they instuted rules outlawing handchecking in that players will become close to unguardable on the perimeter. But does this really speed up the game? Will it stop the subbing of specialists every possession? Obviously not. Does it do anything to curtail stalling? It actually makes it easier for offenses to stall because it takes away an effective defensive tool. Will it make it easier/force the defense to go out and create turnovers? NO! Every team will pack it in and slide super early because you can’t go out and pressure guys if you can’t physically deny them from getting to a position that forces you to slide. You would have to assume you are going to need to slide on every dodge, which means the defense would have to be tight in order to support the slide and recover the man who was on ball. Finally, can a poke check from a SSDM actually be a defensive tool? Again, no. It will have virtually no ability to slow down a dodger, and represents a minimal chance of forcing a turnover. Here’s how I’d coach SSDM’s in a non-crosschecking environment: I’d have them incredibly overplay their guy to one hand, to the point that it guarantees that that player will get a step on them. They’d just trail the guy down the lane (slide is coming anyways) and try to catch the guy trailing his stick. If he doesn’t, so what? Slide comes, he recovers inside and the defense lives to fight another day. Bottom line is that banning crosschecking does nothing to actually speed up the game and allows the things that actually slow the game down to persist, hidden behind a veil of increased scoring, not a faster pace.

I’m certainly not advocating for intent to injure either.  Just good, hard lacrosse!

For me it’s not about losing toughness or babying players.  It’s just about being able to dodge.  But maybe the issue is that players aren’t good enough at that in general and they should just be able to deal with a good crosscheck.  Then again, any sort of crosschecking IS technically illegal, right?