You sound remarkably similar to what Wayne Gretzky said after he retired. The last two years of his career, his Dad kept asking him if he was going to play another year.
He basically said, "I don't know. Every year I go back to camp, the guys are bigger, stronger and hit harder than last year."
When you look around the league, it's obvious how much bigger these guys have gotten. Look at some of the current LA KINGS forwards:
Jeff Carter - 6'4" - 212lbs
Dwight King - 6'4" - 230lbs
Anze Kopitar - 6'3" - 224lbs
Jordan Nolan - 6'3" - 221lbs
I'm assuming their heights are all reflected without wearing skates, which adds a good 2" to those heights. This is one of the reasons many pundits said LA won the cup in 2011. Big, strong forwards and a merciless forecheck. I still remember one of the announcers saying, "Imagine you're a defensemen and everytime LA drops the puck into the corner in your end and you have two of these guys hurtling towards you as you go for the puck. It's a defensemen's worst nightmare."
In hockey there's a strategy for this you both grab each other and slide in at the same time to avoid getting killed on the boards. When Gretzky played no other player could hit him because they didn't have the instigator rule, so if you clobbered him on the boards the biggest goons on his team would take your head off so the result was nobody touched Gretzky until late in his career when they put in that stupid rule.
Hockey also has the problem of players wearing body armor now so hits are even worse than what they used to be.
He basically said, "I don't know. Every year I go back to camp, the guys are bigger, stronger and hit harder than last year."
When you look around the league, it's obvious how much bigger these guys have gotten. Look at some of the current LA KINGS forwards:
Jeff Carter - 6'4" - 212lbs
Dwight King - 6'4" - 230lbs
Anze Kopitar - 6'3" - 224lbs
Jordan Nolan - 6'3" - 221lbs
I'm assuming their heights are all reflected without wearing skates, which adds a good 2" to those heights. This is one of the reasons many pundits said LA won the cup in 2011. Big, strong forwards and a merciless forecheck. I still remember one of the announcers saying, "Imagine you're a defensemen and everytime LA drops the puck into the corner in your end and you have two of these guys hurtling towards you as you go for the puck. It's a defensemen's worst nightmare."