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Opinion
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The overinvolvement of parents is becoming more and more a factor in youth and high school hockey, not only for the boys' sport but for the girls'. This issue keeps resurfacing after a parent was killed in an altercation with another parent after a youth hockey practice. Joe Fitzgerald of the Boston Herald has written an excellent piece on the subject. It is available as a PDF file here. (For Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is required to view a PDF file, click here. Article posting thanks to Bob Rogers of Massachusetts Hockey.) Equipment and Rule Changes Cause Injuriesby Jeremy Clayton / Calgary <jeremycl@telusplanet.net>Possibly the most common and most dangerous hockey injuries these days are head injuries, particularly concussions.Few people know that before players started wearing helmets concussions were almost unheard of and unknown in hockey. So why and how could a device that is supposed to protect players' heads actually be contributing to head injury? Simple: head hits. Before helmets arrived, a head hit was a very rare event except in fights. Now they are very common. Players seem to think it's OK to hit a guy in the head if he's wearing a helmet. Before the age of helmets a head hit would have precipitated a full-scale brawl. Nowadays they're common. And a head hit into the glass or boards is also common. In the old days if a player had done that, they wouldn't have left the rink alive. Another factor is that equipment is being used as a weapon instead of its real purpose, which is to protect the individual player. Elbow pads and shoulder pads were once made from leather, which is fairly soft. Now they're made from plastic, which is very hard. A head hit from a plastic elbow pad or shoulder pad will definitely hurt—I guarantee it. A third factor is that sticks are now being made from metal alloys or hard plastics. Prior to this they were all wood. Wood is hard, of course, but these other substances are harder still. That's why some defencemen like them. A fourth factor is the instigator rule, which means that any player who starts a fight gets kicked out the game. This rule was brought in to cater to the sensibilities of American hockey fans, who (quite frankly) don't understand hockey and view fighting as a barbarism. Hockey fighting had a very real and necessary place in the game: If some goon or moron hit Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky, the team's enforcer would be sent out to do something about it—i.e, police the situation and protect the stars. This system was simple and it worked. But as soon as the instigator rule was brought in, teams could no longer protect their stars. In fact, Lemieux and Gretzky complained about this rule for years. But everybody just thought they were whining. You could also ask Forsberg of Colorado, who was so beaten up that he took a whole season off this year (2001-02) to recuperate. (He came back to star in the playoffs). I guarantee that if the instigator rule weren't in existence, he would have been a lot healthier. The star players are basically being left to their own devices, to defend themselves. This is much to the detriment of the game. If you combine these factors with the fact that players are bigger and faster these days, it all adds up to a lethal combination that results in lots of injuries—and many more head injuries in particular. I was checking the NHL player injury lists in the paper this year, and most teams had a least one player with a concussion or head injury on their injury list. Some had as many as three or four. The Calgary Flames had one defenceman out for the whole season with a concussion. And we've seen players forced to retire due to incurring so many concussions—notably Brett Lindros. He will probably soon be followed by his brother, Eric, who has sustained several concussions, including at least one this year. If hockey fans really want to tackle the injury problem, they should start lobbying the NHL (which influences everybody) right away to have plastic equipment modified or eliminated: elbow pads and shoulder pads for starters. I know Don Cherry has spoken out on at least two occasions on Hockey Night in Canada about the plastic elbow pads. I don't believe the average person is aware of how lethal this equipment is. So at the very least, a campaign about this would raise awareness. Jeremy Clayton / Calgary P.S. Just a couple of added thoughts on fighting. I am not supporting fighting, but... I played hockey for many years and never fought once. Most players don't fight. In other words, the average player doesn't really want fighting either. But if the league and the refs don't protect the skill players against the idiots and goons, they have to defend themselves or have someone stand up for them. The instigator rule has made it impossible for the teams to police the goons and goofs who attack the skill players and stars. I know that a lot of people would like to see fighting completely eliminated. I would too (from all sports), if they could come up with a better system. The instigator rule is not the solution. Fact: Although an occasional player may get cut in a fight, it is very rare for a player to actually get hurt or injured. Fact: Although outsiders think otherwise, hockey fans do not believe fighting is an integral "part of the game" and do not go to hockey games just to watch fights. After watching (or playing) a good hockey game, I've never heard anyway say the game was diminished or would have been better if there had been some fighting. I don't even notice if there were fights or not. Nor have I ever heard anyone say that a poor game would have been better if there had been some fights. If it was a lousy game, it was a lousy game. Fact: much hockey fighting could be eliminated if the NHL simply increased the size of the rinks to European dimensions. This would create more room. Hockey players have become bigger, faster and more mobile in the modern era, and there simply isn't as much room out there as there used to be, which leads to more contact and fights. Increased rink size would also bring in a greater accent on skill, team play, skating and passing. Puck handling and puck movement would become much more important, as it is in European hockey. And star players would also have more room to move and display their talents. Unfortunately, this will never happen. Why? Because it would invite more Europeans into the NHL. (Some fans think that there are already too many Europeans in the NHL.) And expanding rink size would also be expensive, though it could be done progressively over a five-or ten-year period. The NHL is still toying around with the idea of removing the red line. This will certainly help somewhat by opening up the ice and eliminating the terrible and boring "trap" system of checking which most teams now employ. It would also cut down on the clutching, grabbing and hooking that lead to a lot of fights. Fact: A lot of the hockey fighting has been cleaned up over the years. You very rarely see the big brawls (and never see the bench clearing brawls that used to exist) that we now often see in baseball and basketball. All in all, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but anything that leads to fewer injuries is OK with me. A Few Simple Changesby Paul Craigen <craigen@idirect.com>My interest in ice hockey has been life long. I am 45 years old and grew up playing hockey from as early as I can remember on the frigid outdoor rinks and frozen ponds of Northern Ontario, where -30º F was not uncommon. Hockey was one of the few forms of entertainment in the winter and part of the very fabric of society growing up. I still play old timers hockey. It is a wonderful sport to play if safe, but unfortunately it is probably the most dangerous sport you can play. You are three times more likely to end up in a wheelchair as a quadriplegic or paraplegic than a football player. And you are constantly facing the risk of concussion by your head hitting the Plexiglas, the boards, or the ice. Why is it so dangerous? Because you are on a 1/8 inch piece of steel on hard ice and are surrounded by boards and glass that don't move in a collision. Add to this hitting (at least in men's hockey), and the sport as it is now played is a disaster waiting to happen. The only people to benefit from this setup are the professional team owners and players at the highest level where violence is used to sell tickets. Hockey is a crap shoot. Each year there will always be a few players who will end up permanently disabled by paralysis, concussion, or blindness. That's why I do not want my two sons playing the game. But we could make this a truly fantastic sport by simply making a few changes
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