Accidents can and do happen anywhere,
anytime to anyone. This statement is
very true when dealing with a physical contact sport like hockey. There is a certain amount of risk involved in
playing any sport. When an injury
occurs, it inflicts tremendous hardship on the injured person, the team and the
parents as well. Hockey is a very
popular and fun game to play (it is now considered Canada's national sport,
along with lacrosse) but it can also be very dangerous. As players become
better educated about hockey injuries and play by the rules the game will be
even more fun to play. This paper will
discuss the importance of common and catastrophic injuries, protective
equipment, an indepth analysis report, the role of a coach and personal related
hockey injuries.
MOST COMMON
INJURIES
During the hockey season a person's body
ends up getting bruised, injured and banged around. A hockey injury report done by the
International Hockey Centre of Excellence has statistics on the most common
hockey injuries and how they occured.
the most common injuries are to the shoulder, knee and the head.
Injury to the shoulder is the most common
hockey injury in the game today because of the physcial contact. Of the injuries reported in the 1993-1994
hockey season, 12% of those were shoulder related. Injury to the acromio-clavicular joint was
the most frequent because of the bodychecking.
Every time a player steps on the ice, he is constantly being pounded
into the boards, shoulder first. The
glenohumeral was often being injuried mainly from fighting and accidental
contact. Hockey manufactures are
constantly trying to improve shoulder pads so this injury will not happen.
The knee followed closely behind the
shoulder being injured 11% of the time.
A knee injury is very serious in hockey because it can end a player's
career. Knee injuries usually occur in
the open ice area when a player is cutting hard and is kneed or tripped by an
opposing player. Accidentally colliding
with an opposing player or one of your own teamates, often ends in knee related
injuries. The medial collateral ligament
was damaged in 80% of all reported knee injuries, followed by the lateral
collateral ligament 10% of the time. The
cruciate ligament and meniscal were injured 3% of the time.
Head injuries are the third most common
type of hockey injury accounting for 8% of all injuries. If you were to include facial injuries which
would be a combination of the head, teeth/mouth, jaw/chin and eye injuries they
would represent 26% of all reported injuries.
A special analysis has been undertaken by the Hockey Development Centre
of Canada to better understand this problem.
The head is often driven into the boards awkwardly which leads to
concussions. NHL,OHL amd Junior A players are suffering head injuries because
they do not have to wear full face masks and are subject to stick infraction.
CATASTROPHIC
INJURIES
Catastrophic injury is any incident
causing death or permanent long term disability. Hockey played out of Ontario has seen a
dramatic decrease in catastrophic injuries.
There were 26 such injuries in 1992 compared to 44 in 1989 and 79 in
1986. In the past, Ontario had
represented almost half of (more than 200) spinal injuries since 1976. The reduction of these numbers is due from
hockey executives who introduced a rule prohibiting checking from behind in the
1985 season. A report done by Glen
Mccurdie (manager of the health benifts for the CHA) told of nine Canadian
players who suffered broken necks, with three reslting in quadriplegia. In the 1992 season four players suffered
broken necks, two were classed as unavoidable because they involved players
losing their balance and falling into the boards.
Finally, league and executive members are
beginning to crack down on people who hit from behind and cause catastrophic
injuries. On December 6, 1994, OHL
commissioner David Branch suspended Steve McLaren for the entire season after
he ran Ottawa 67's Jure Kovacevic from behind.
Kovacevic sustained a broken
vertebrae and cracked ribs when hit into the boards. Kovacevic is still recovering from the injury
even though he was not paralyzed. Almost
six years ago another Ottawa player, Grant Marshall was hit from behind by Jason Young and broke his neck. Young was also suspended for the year. Marshall, luckly was able to return after a
long term therapy and was drafted first round to the Toronto Maple Leafs the
next year.
Checking from behind is a very serious
matter and it comprised 11.13% of all reports filed. Checking from behind is found most frequent
in the Bantam (34.73%) and Midget (23.62%) age groups. Players at this age are just beginning to
incorporate hitting into their game. Many
children are not properly taught the basics of hitting in their peewee years
and because of this they develop bad checking habits, and this is were checking
from behind comes into play. To make
hockey a safer game to play, hitting from behind must be put to a complete. Parents, coaches, fans and players have to
become better educated for this to occur.
PROTECTIVE
EQUIPMENT
Having the right protective equipment when
playing hockey is so very important because of the physical contact. Every year players are receiving serious
injuries because they have the wrong hockey equipment. Unnecessary injury can reult from incorrectly
fitted equipment. All hockey players
should have and learn how to tell if their equipment is properly protecting
them.
SKATES- Should provide protection for the entire
foot and the ankle area
(achilles tendon). Your feet should fit with your toes just
barely touching the
front of your skate.
SHIN PADS- Must
be properly postioned at the knees for full flexibility and
extend just to the skate top. The shin pads should not roll off
your knee at any time
in a game. They should also be
protective enough to
with-stand a hard shot or slash.
ATHLETIC SUPPORT-
Should be fitted comfortably, according to waist
size. A proper cup must be worn at all times.
HOCKEY PANTS- The
short pants (tackula) should be about six inches
larger than the
player's waist size to give extra protection and
flexibilty. Always check to make sure that all the
padding is
in the right place and
does not fall out.
GLOVES- Must be snug but not to tight and should
over-lap your elbow
pad to protect your
forearm. Players should be using full
wrist cuffs instead of
the short cuffs because they give you
the extra protection
you need around your wrists.
ELBOW PADS- The
elbow joint should rest firmly in the cup.
The elastics
or velcro should
feel snug and tight. For more upper arm
protection, your
elbow pads should be long enough to be
overlapped by your
shoulder pads. Make sure your elbow
pads have a good
slash guard as well.
SHOULDER PADS- Be
sure the shoulder cap rests squarely on the top of
your shoulder. Adjustment straps should always be snug
and tight. At contact levels, your pads should be strong
enough to give and
receive hard checks. New shoulder
restraints are built
into the pad and are now being used to
stop shoulder
injuries.
HOCKEY HEOMETS-
Only properly fitted, correctly adjusted Canadian
Standards Association
(CSA) certified helmets can be used.
The reason so many
head injuries occur in hockey is because
of improper hockey
helmets.
INDEPTH ANALYSIS
REPORT
The following section will give you a more
indepth analysis about hockey injuries.
Aspects like, where players are most commonly being on the ice, number
of injuries per period, injuries by position, number of injuries by assessment
and finally the time loss due to injuries will be discussed.
NUMBER OF
INJURIES BY ZONES- This shows where players were most commonly injuried when
they were playing hockey. This is a
combination of being injuried with board and no board contact.
As shown, a great majority of players are
being injuried in zone 4 (23%), zone 5 (19%) and also zone 6 (19%). These three zones all exist in the centre of
the ice, telling people that players are receiving most of their injuries in
the neutral ice area.
ZONE OF INJURY
BOARD CONTACT- Board contact occured most often in zone 6 (22.5%), zone 4 (20%), Zone 9 (17%) in the attacking corner and zone
1 (12%) in the defending corner. This
happened becuase most of the board contact occurs inside the blue line and the
corners.
ZONE OF INJURY NO
BOARD CONTACT- Injuries where boards were not a factor occured in zone 4 (25%),
zone 5 (22%), zone 6 (16%) and zone 7 (11%).
All of these zones occur right in the middle of the ice.
NUMBER OF
INJURIES BY PERIOD- By periods, injury
rates occur during the second period at 41%.
Injuries in the third period occurred 37% while injuries in the first
occured 21% of the time. There have been
no injuries reported during the warm ups and only 1% occurred in overtime.
INJURIES BY
POSTION- By position, wingers are the most commonly injuried at 42% because of
hard forechecking and tough defence you need to play on the wing. Wingers are always skating up and down the
boards every game and are constantly being hit into them more then any other players. Defencemen were a close second at 37% because
the defence are constantly skating back into their own end chasing the puck and
being hit into the end boards all game long.
This is where most of these injuries occurred. Centres sustained 17% because they mostly
stay in the neutral parts of the ice and are not involved in most of the
physical activity in the corners.
NUMBER OF
INJURIES BY ASSESSMENT- The most common type of injury in hockey is from
contusions, at 24% because of the puck and the stick use. Sprains then followed at 19% and then strains
at 18%. with these just being minor injuries to players.
TIME LOSS DUE TO
INJURY- Time loss due to injury states how long it took a player to recover
from an injury and return to action. 38%
of those athletes injuried playing hockey were out for less than a week
while 36% returned the same day. Those out for less than three weeks
contributed to 18% while 9% of injured players were out more than three
weeks. Injuries which required more than
three weeks recovery were to the shoulder, knee, head and forearms.
ROLE OF THE COACH
The role of the coach is a very important
one when dealing with children and young adults playing hockey. The coach must support his/her players and
make hockey the fun game it was meant to be.
What is a coach? A coach is a person who is willing to give up
his/her free time and energy to help make a team that much better. As a coach, it is also your responsibiblity
to give your players an environment that provides them with maximum enjoyment
and safety. Injury prevention is a vey
serious matter when playing hockey. This
begins with making sure your players have the proper equipment and knowledge of
how to play the game. A coach should
always begin a game and practice with a series of stretches and warm up exercises that will cut
down on injuries. Coaches should
remember that injuries to players can and will continue to bother them throughout
adulthood of not handled correctly. They
should do all they can to make sure that
their players are kept injury free so it will not affect them for the rest of
their insightful careers.
PERSONAL RELATED
INJURIES PLAYING HOCKEY
I have been playing hockey for sixteen
years now and I have suffered two major injuries during this time period. I fractured my clavicle when I was hit a
meter away from the boards. It happened
in my major peewee year when I was twelve years old and it put me out of hockey
for almost eight weeks. After my
shoulder it took me a long time to get my confidence back and at first I was
afraid to go into the corners. The main
reason why my clavicle was fractured was because my shoulder pads were not the
most protective piece of equipment compared to other brands.
Two years later in major bantam, I
fractured my ulna and raduis bone after being hit from behind the opposition's
net. My arm required closed reduction
surgery and I was in a cast for two month and out of hockey for three months. Having better equipment could not have helped
me in this situation. When a person is
hit from behind, unfortunately the top brand equipment will not be able to
withstand the hit and a serious injury usaully occurs. Hockey would be a better game if all hitting
from behind was somehow eliminated.
CONCLUSION
Since hockey is a physical contact sport,
injuries are bound to happen. Federations like Hockey Development Canada
are routinely doing studies analyzing different factors of hockey injuries so
that in the future they can make recommendations on how to eliminate
these. We can make hockey an even better
game to play if all players would be aware of each other and cut down on cheap
shots.
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