My experience agrees with yours. There is an emphasis on physicality outside of California, and the referees allow that and demonstrate leniency towards the finishing of checks, so long as it's not a blatant hit from behind, obvious head contact, or boarding. I don't know what they emphasize to the refs in california, but in Bantam major, my kid received a number of 10&2's on hard, but clean checks, and I saw the same thing occur to other players both on his team, and to opponents, when they were at times penalized for clean hits on our kids. It got bad enough that my kid was suspended a game for 2 clean legal checks in a game where the ref was a complete idiot and maxed out the scoresheet with bad calls. I think it was something like 24 penalties between the 2 teams. I'd seen this same ref destroy a high school game earlier in the year with his officiating. Another friend of mine, appealed a suspension of his kid, and with videos of the hits, got the suspension reversed, after the supervising official agreed that neither of the 2 checks should have been penalized.