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G&M article on concussion conference. Including youth/junior hockey player who had at least half a dozen concussions. Was touted as possible 1st round draft pick and didn't get that far due to complications from concussions.
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Their messages, in a nutshell: You don’t have to lose consciousness to suffer a concussion (they can be tricky to diagnose, and are often accompanied by neck, nasal and dental injuries); any time one is suspected the player must be immediately withdrawn from the game or practice; no player should ever return to full contact until he or she is completely asymptomatic and cleared by a doctor; children suffer greater damage than adults; helmets can’t protect against the injury, full face shields don’t hurt; and the evidence on mouthguards is inconclusive.
I know the largest concern in hockey related concussions is for players, but I was wondering if anyone knows of anything being done for goaltenders? I had 5 concussions in my goaltending career; 1 from a fight, 2 from slap shots, and 2 from being run into the net and having my head hit the crossbar and post.
The fighting one was my own fault granted, but being run into the back of the net knocked me out both times and there isn't a lot of protection on the back of the helmet.
I am 27 now and starting to feel the long term effects; memory loss, emotional instability, headaches, sleepless nights, etc. Scary stuff really. I am hoping that goalie masks could be looked at to increase protection.
I know the largest concern in hockey related concussions is for players, but I was wondering if anyone knows of anything being done for goaltenders? I had 5 concussions in my goaltending career; 1 from a fight, 2 from slap shots, and 2 from being run into the net and having my head hit the crossbar and post.
The fighting one was my own fault granted, but being run into the back of the net knocked me out both times and there isn't a lot of protection on the back of the helmet.
I am 27 now and starting to feel the long term effects; memory loss, emotional instability, headaches, sleepless nights, etc. Scary stuff really. I am hoping that goalie masks could be looked at to increase protection.
Not to be a ass. But that's the attraction for some. The big head removing hit. Maybe just maybe the OHL does it right. The keep your head up argument is getting old with armour the players are wearing today.
Perhaps its time once again to consider going to European sized rinks. I know how unpopular that is around here, but the majority of concussions do not occur out on the open ice. Less play along the boards and more play on the open ice would go a long way towards lowering the amount of concussions suffered by the players.
Not to be a ass. But that's the attraction for some. The big head removing hit. Maybe just maybe the OHL does it right. The keep your head up argument is getting old with armour the players are wearing today.
Perhaps its time once again to consider going to European sized rinks. I know how unpopular that is around here, but the majority of concussions do not occur out on the open ice. Less play along the boards and more play on the open ice would go a long way towards lowering the amount of concussions suffered by the players.
Nope. That horse left the barn in the 90's with the wave of new arena construction.
There is no way an NHL team will pay the cost to retrofit their arenas for larger ice (and sacrifice expensive lower bowl seats in the process) in order to reduce concussions.
It could have been done over time if the NHL made that decision in 1990 - but not now.
When Hockey Canada held a concussion seminar last month in Montreal, the participants received a packet that included a brief welcome letter from Ken Dryden – Hall of Fame goaltender, Member of Parliament in Canada.
Dryden wrote about how we think back on the past and wonder why we could have been so wrong about things. He mentioned slavery, the absence of rights for women and smoking. Then he went to sports. Why did football and hockey players go so long without wearing helmets? Why did hockey goalies go so long without wearing masks?
Then he wondered what people will think of us 50 years from now, and he mentioned head injuries in sports – their short- and long-term effects.
“Knowing what they know then, some hints of which we know now, these people of the future will wonder, ‘What could they have been thinking? Why didn’t they do more?’ ” Dryden wrote.
Video on new shoulder pads, plus discussion on how country of origin/language impacts reporting/identification of concussions.
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Echemendia's group has determined that players from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds report concussions in different manners.
"We know what is the typical symptom pattern for the typical NHL player by their language of origin," Echemendia said. "So, for example, if you have one group of individuals who tend not to report a lot of symptoms and all of sudden there's a player from that group who has reported a lot of symptoms, that's something you better stand up and take knowledge of and pay attention to. Because that player is really trying to tell you that something's wrong here."
Different cultures also put more or less importance around different symptoms, Echemendia explained. One culture may not consider a headache to be important and won't report it, but they will report dizziness. Meanwhile, headaches can be one of the indicators for post-concussion syndrome.
Lacrosse, or baggataway, as it was once known, is no stranger to violence and injury. Blood runs from the game’s role in the capture of Fort Michilimackinac nearly 250 years ago to recent decades in the lacrosse boxes of small-town and suburban Canada. I grew up in one such community myself – Huntsville, Ont. – where hockey was the winter game, lacrosse the summer game, and lacrosse considered the tougher of the two sports to survive.
But no more. Something happened in recent years that has seen a flip-flop between the two national games, with lacrosse dealing with its violence and injury issues and hockey seemingly without the foggiest notion of what to do – even the answer is as obvious as simply saying no, no more.
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The league now has Rule 77 dealing with “dangerous contact to the head” and a myriad of other rules and regulations that have dramatically changed the way the game is played around the head, without significantly affecting how it is played around the net.
Including "significant" (relatively) fines and game suspensions.
USA Hockey to consider banning body checking for youth players
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USA Hockey is considering a proposal that would make bodychecking illegal for all players under 13, an initiative sure to ignite the growing debate over the proper time to introduce contact at the grassroots level.
The proposed measure was raised at USA Hockey’s annual winter meeting in Colorado Springs, Colo., and according to the association’s senior director of hockey development, Kevin McLaughlin, it was not designed primarily to address safety issues.
“It is a skill development initiative first,” said McLaughlin, who explained that his organization’s research found that bodychecking at the peewee level was significantly distracting players from improving their skills at a critical time in their development. Too often, he said, players of that age were either too focused on hitting or trying to avoid a hit."
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The USA Hockey proposals, which also seek to penalize all contact to the head and neck area, will be voted on at the organization’s annual congress in June.
According to McLaughlin, a series of research studies into head injuries that culminated with a concussion summit at the Mayo Clinic last fall also reinforced the need for the initiatives. McLaughlin cited a seminal report conducted by University of Calgary researcher Carolyn Emery and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association as pivotal as well.
Emery’s report followed more than 2,000 peewee players – half from Alberta leagues, where bodychecking was permitted, and the rest from Quebec, where it wasn’t. The results show a significant difference in the number of head injuries, with 73 concussions among Alberta players over the 2007-2008 season, compared to 20 in Quebec. There were 14 severe concussions in Alberta, versus four in Quebec.
“What we find is that an 11-year-old brain is more susceptible to concussion,” McLaughlin said. “The 11- and 12-year-old brain is not cognitively developed to anticipate being hit. So if you can’t anticipate it and you can’t protect yourself, you’re putting yourself in a predicament to suffer a more severe injury.”
Not against banning youth of checking, love the idea actually.
The only way the NHL is going to rid of concusions is ban checking, make the puck plastic and hollow, and turn the ice into gum. There will always be concussions in a contact sport especially when players can get up to 20+ mph.
I think the only way to help the rate of concussions is doing the reverse of they are doing now. Less saftey equipment. Players put on all that gear and literally become invincible making them overconfident and less respectful of the opposing team.
That Mercury News article is ridiculous and wrong in so many ways, I don't even know where to start.
Nichol was not suspended for violating rule 48. He was suspended for elbowing that involved the head. Thornton absolutely and clearly violated the blindside rule, and if he hasn't figured out how yet, he needs to look up the definition of "blindside."
Then the author tries to compare it to the Crosby stuff, which is equally ridiculous. Neither the Hedman hit (boarding but the head was neither the primary point of contact nor targeted - the head was involved in a hit that took the whole body) nor the Steckel collision (incidental contact initiated by Crosby) violate rule 48 and are completely other worlds from the Thornton hit.
The Nichol hit is closest to the Kostopoulos hit on Stuart, though much more illegal than Kostopoulos because of the contact from the extended forearms. Targeting the head in an otherwise allowable check is fine. But Nichol's extended forearms bring the elbowing rules into play, and elbowing violations to the head are always taken fairly seriously.
If the author really wanted to make a point about the rule being confusing, he needed to cite the suspension to Kostopoulos. Bringing in a pair of valid suspensions and whining the Sharks just don't understand, though, is really a commentary on the team's victim mindset.
Savard has another concussion. IMO, retirement is his best bet for a happy life after hockey.
Savard made it back for the playoffs, but now he's really messed up, and will miss a playoffs anyway. Really have to wonder if the best thing in Crosby's case is to pack it in for the rest of the season, including playoffs, and really really err on the side of caution.
But nobody in management, and no player, is willing going to accept that. Maybe the rule should be something like "if you aren't symptom-free in 2 weeks, you're automatically out for six months".
I bet you the concussion rate is at the same as it was before,the knowledge is just much more greater. Comparing my first concussion to the last one i had a year ago the docters know alot more about it now.
