From the state of New York criminal code, section 35:
If the kid was engaging in ongoing puck shooting at the man or his son, he would have a right to use physical force to stop it.
In searching the New York penal code I’ve not actually found any crime called battery. This link lists an outline of what the various sections of the penal code cover, and section 120 covers “assault and related crimes.” The three degrees of assaulted are explained mainly differentiated based on how serious an injury is inflicted and a few other criteria, all of them require an “intent to cause physical injury” to another person. So simply laying hands on someone else would not qualify as assault unless it could be demonstrated you had an intent to cause harm.
I’ve been unable to locate a separate crime called battery in the New York Penal Code. It defines Third Degree Assault more narrowly than your instructors did, too:
First and second degree assault are more serious charges than third degree, and also require injury.
The guy was charged with harassment:
Now it’s possible your instructors were mushing together the torts of assault and battery–those are civil claims. It’s also possible that I missed something in the code.
Okay, is this discussion about the general case, or the specific? If it’s this specific case, then I don’t see how anybody could possibly question what the man did. It’s self-defense. He was struck three times by pucks from this kid, and at they weren’t at ground level. He is 100% in his rights to remove the stick from the kid by whatever means necessary, because he and his child are being physically assaulted by the 10-year-old. Once the kid has been disarmed, he can then be escorted to the rink manager.
I don’t believe in touching other people’s kids, and I don’t like other people touching my kids. This, however, is a different situation. That 10-year-old was physically attacking an adult and his 3-year-old. The situation needed to be dealt with immediately, and it was dealt with. The kid wasn’t injured in any way. His mother has no grounds whatsoever for a lawsuit.
I agree 100%. Screw the little bastard.
Seinfeld.
I was googling around, trying to find if there were any further developments on this, but there were none. I did find out how Schmidl grabbed the kid, however. He put his hand on his shoulder, he grabbed him by the collar, or he had him in a full choke hold. Take your pick.
Maybe it was a progression. That’ll teach the little brat to resist. Step four should have been: taser, then drag by feet.
You’re too nice. Start with the taser, then escalate.
No kidding.
Although I like Rick’s “scream at him until he cries and then for about 30 seconds after that”, with which I had success in the past with misbehaving minors who didn’t belong to me. I understand the concern about assaulting children and abuse and all that, but the flip side is that too many of the little bastards think they can get away with anything while the adults agonize.
You could always pick up the hockey pucks and peg them at the little snot’s head while saying, “Here - I think you lost this.”
Will the guy get into trouble? Probably. Kids like this have parents that either ignore them or are overly soliticitous about their delicate little flowers.
Should the guy get into trouble? Not unless there is more to the story.
Regards,
Shodan
Many moons ago, I worked in a busy pizza restaurant. One particularly harrowing Friday night, we were totally slammed. Out in the dining room, it was wall-to-wall parents with young kids. One kid, a toddler of about three or four, was running wild through the dining room. This happened a lot at this restaurant, so often that the owner put up a sign asking that parents be aware of where their children were at all times. The sign had no effect.
I had just run two large pizzas out to a table and was swinging through the dining room busing other tables on my way back to the open kitchen when the kid, seemingly out of nowhere, comes barreling into my shin. We both go down, but I somehow had the presence of mind to direct the handfull of dirty plates and silverware away from the tyke. As I got to my feet, I saw the kid sitting upright on the floor, not crying but blinking in confusion. I grabbed the kid under each arm and pulled him up so he was standing on his feet again. I said something like “That’s why you shouldn’t be running around in here.” and asked him where his parents were. He pointed at them and I said “Go sit down.” All of this was witnessed by a dining room full of patrons. Then I picked up the dirty plates and headed back to the kitchen, where I got a couple of more pizzas for delivery and returned to the dining room.
Not five steps out of the kitchen, I was met by the child’s father who told me very loudly that if he ever saw me laying a hand on his child again he would beat the shit out of me. “What was I supposed to do, leave him on the ground?” I said. Then I showed him the two steaming pizzas in my hand. “We run the oven at 800 degrees. Can you imagine what would have happened if your kid had run into me when I had two handfuls of pizzas? This cheese sticks like napalm. I’ve got the scars on my arms to prove it.” He was not mollified. In fact, he became even more angry and asked to see the manager. I said “OK”, dropped off the pizzas. A guy at the pizza-receiving table heard the whole thing and said he didn’t know how I kept from punching the guy. “Me neither,” I said.
The manager talked to the guy, comped their meal and asked them to leave.
Now, was I wrong to do what I did?
Not punch the guy? Hell yes. 
I don’t know why some parents are so lazy or uninvolved that they can let their kids be brats, especially when it could be dangerous. My kids learned very early that the slightest bit of acting up meant we left. They grew up well behaved.
The kid in the OP is going to wind up in jail, and the idiot mother is going to be wailing about where did I go wrong.
I grew up in Queens also, and no matter how rowdy we got walking back from school we never, never, never would have mouthed off to an adult.
All is not lost - I live across from an elementary school, and the kids from it have never been obnoxious. Now their crazy parents and their cars on the other hand …
- Nope. He was stopping an actively dangerous situation. Grabbing the stick from the kid might have caused him to fall on the ice, which seems to be more dangerous than grabbing him and marching him off the ice.
- Nope.
- A. I also might have gotten in the kid’s face. I can look damn angry when I want to. If the kid made one move with the stick, then I would have grabbed him.
B. I agree that if there was a history of my kid causing trouble, I’d never leave him alone on the ice. if I really had to go to the bathroom, he can be taken off and made to sit until I got back. Beyond that, I would have hidden my head in shame, make the kid apologize, and apologize myself.
Some kids are just genetically bad, and there is nothing a parent can do. In other case, I sometimes think the parents should get the same sentence as the kid, in punishment for letting a little monster grow without doing anything about it.
I remember getting in a fight when I was a kid, getting my ass beat by my little league coach, then the principal, who drove me home so my father could finish the job.
A triple paddling. I am not old either. I am 23. I did grow up in a smaller town though. And I really believe that I deserved it. I never got in that kind of trouble again.
Self defense. Your honor he had already hit me with three slap shots, when I went over to discuss it with him, He raised his stick in such a way that I thought he was going to hit me with it. I was in fear for my good health. I took it away from him to prevent further injury to myself.
Prosecute that. 
Or just pick them up, period. You shoot your pucks at me - no pucks for you.
vibrotronica, I hate seeing the free-range kids in restaurants. The parents put the waitstaff in such a no-win situation when they allow that to happen.
I’ve worked enough restaurant jobs to smell a rat here.
Restaurant patrons can be real mercenary bastards and sadly, using your kid to get a free meal is not all that surprising. I’m not saying the guy deliberately sent his kid out to trip an employee or someone, but he was definitely prepared to take advantage of it, and probably has before. Mission accomplished, he got his free meal at your expense.
One of the articles I read about this said he was doing this, to no avail.
ETA: Personally, I think the police officers correctly booked the father. Once called, it is not their job to judge the issue. For all we know, they could have told the brat’s parents not to press the issue. How this gets handled by a prosecutor will be another story.