Too many head and neck injuries in hockey

This is outrageous and preventable. The glass should be redesigned to prevent this. Some rule changes might not hurt either.

NHL players are aware of the dangerous areas around the benches... especially a veteran defenseman like Chara. In my opinion, rule changes or redesign don't prevent this sort of thing (plenty of players get hurt on dangerous hits without involvement of the turnbuckle). Chara is generally not a dirty player, but he was riding Pacioretty into the boards after the puck was gone (interference), knew who it was (they had an "encounter" of sorts in an earlier game) and took it too far. Although I agree with the league that there probably was not intent to injure, it's certainly a dangerous hit due to the location on the ice. Does changing rules/rink design prevent incidents like this? I doubt it. Hopefully Pacioretty has a quick recovery.

That being said, this is probably a thread for one of the off-topic forums.

Cactus12
Chara is generally not a dirty player, but he was riding Pacioretty into the boards after the puck was gone (interference), knew who it was (they had an "encounter" of sorts in an earlier game) and took it too far.

Full Disclosure: I am a Bruins fan. That said, I think I'm being objective when I say that no fine/suspension for Chara was right. I don't think he took it too far. If not for the unfortunate collision with the glass edge, that would have been a fairly ordinary "continuation" check that probably wouldn't have been called --Pacioretty had just struck the puck down the ice. To me it looks like Chara is trying to slow up an opponent that has more head of steam towards a puck heading towards the B's goal. And Chara isn't even looking at Pacioretty as he applies the check; he's looking down ice to try to track the puck. I just don't believe that Chara, at speed and looking down ice, lined up Pacioretty to hit the glass edge.

PTI, which I generally enjoy, talked about the hit. They seemed to conclude that it was unfortunate rather than dirty. But they really annoyed me when they said that the configuration of the glass needs to be changed without any acknowledgment of the difficulty of doing so without putting glass in front of team benches and thus hampering changes on the fly and creating new dangers by having more open doors during a game. That's just a lazy comment from people who don't watch hockey routinely.

JasonN95
PTI, which I generally enjoy, talked about the hit. They seemed to conclude that it was unfortunate rather than dirty. But they really annoyed me when they said that the configuration of the glass needs to be changed without any acknowledgment of the difficulty of doing so without putting glass in front of team benches and thus hampering changes on the fly and creating new dangers by having more open doors during a game.

Why not just angle the glass there so it's 45 degrees from the boards instead of 90? If anything, this would improve visibility from the bench at the cost of making it more difficult to clear the puck off the glass.

Kyle Rose

JasonN95
PTI, which I generally enjoy, talked about the hit. They seemed to conclude that it was unfortunate rather than dirty. But they really annoyed me when they said that the configuration of the glass needs to be changed without any acknowledgment of the difficulty of doing so without putting glass in front of team benches and thus hampering changes on the fly and creating new dangers by having more open doors during a game.

Why not just angle the glass there so it's 45 degrees from the boards instead of 90? If anything, this would improve visibility from the bench at the cost of making it more difficult to clear the puck off the glass.

Absolutely, that's what's done on counter-tops. A 45^o corner is much safer.

Cactus12
NHL players are aware of the dangerous areas around the benches... especially a veteran defenseman like Chara. In my opinion, rule changes or redesign don't prevent this sort of thing (plenty of players get hurt on dangerous hits without involvement of the turnbuckle). Chara is generally not a dirty player, but he was riding Pacioretty into the boards after the puck was gone (interference), knew who it was (they had an "encounter" of sorts in an earlier game) and took it too far. Although I agree with the league that there probably was not intent to injure, it's certainly a dangerous hit due to the location on the ice. Does changing rules/rink design prevent incidents like this? I doubt it. Hopefully Pacioretty has a quick recovery.

That being said, this is probably a thread for one of the off-topic forums.

If you watch the hit in really slow motion (record it and play it back one frame at a time) it looks malicious and avoidable to me. Those corners have been a nightmare in modern hockey. I bet there are many possible solutions to this problem. I would like to see some of them implemented soon.

Fortunately, despite the neck fracture, Pacioretty is able to walk already.

How about no glass there and the teams act responsibly, e.g. they don't try to crawl into the opposition's bench? Pierre M. will have to keep his head up for pucks, though.

BigRedHockeyFan

Cactus12
NHL players are aware of the dangerous areas around the benches... especially a veteran defenseman like Chara. In my opinion, rule changes or redesign don't prevent this sort of thing (plenty of players get hurt on dangerous hits without involvement of the turnbuckle). Chara is generally not a dirty player, but he was riding Pacioretty into the boards after the puck was gone (interference), knew who it was (they had an "encounter" of sorts in an earlier game) and took it too far. Although I agree with the league that there probably was not intent to injure, it's certainly a dangerous hit due to the location on the ice. Does changing rules/rink design prevent incidents like this? I doubt it. Hopefully Pacioretty has a quick recovery.

That being said, this is probably a thread for one of the off-topic forums.

If you watch the hit in really slow motion (record it and play it back one frame at a time) it looks malicious and avoidable to me. Those corners have been a nightmare in modern hockey. I bet there are many possible solutions to this problem. I would like to see some of them implemented soon.

Full disclose, I too am a Bruins fan. But I don't think it's ever fair to glean intent in an NHL move from really slow motion. My guess is that Chara meant to finish the check and didn't have time to think about the situation he was putting Pacioretty into and its various dangers. Granted I'm no NHL player, but I've definitely done moves in my beer league where I was only intending to play strong, and as soon as it happened thought to myself "oh shit, I could have broken that guy's neck by accident." In a full-check, full-speed, high-skill NHL game, I'm sure it happens lots.

Fortunately, despite the neck fracture, Pacioretty is able to walk already.

Knock on wood!

ftyuv
Full disclose, I too am a Bruins fan. But I don't think it's ever fair to glean intent in an NHL move from really slow motion.

I think the Bruins are scum, especially Tim Thomas, and I also think Chara was trying to drive Pacioretty into the stanchion (though not with the intention of causing an injury of such severity, certainly), but I still agree with this. Super slo-mo distorts a viewer's perspective of something that, in reality, happened in roughly half a second.

ftyuv


Full disclose, I too am a Bruins fan. But I don't think it's ever fair to glean intent in an NHL move from really slow motion. My guess is that Chara meant to finish the check and didn't have time to think about the situation he was putting Pacioretty into and its various dangers. Granted I'm no NHL player, but I've definitely done moves in my beer league where I was only intending to play strong, and as soon as it happened thought to myself "oh shit, I could have broken that guy's neck by accident." In a full-check, full-speed, high-skill NHL game, I'm sure it happens lots.

Okay, I'll go along with this.

But, back to the engineering aspect of the problem, a simple redesign of the glass would be appropriate. I think we can all agree on that.

BigRedHockeyFan
But, back to the engineering aspect of the problem, a simple redesign of the glass would be appropriate. I think we can all agree on that.

Bien sur.

This lengthy piece by Ken Dryden on head injuries in hockey is worth reading.

cbuckser
This lengthy piece by Ken Dryden on head injuries in hockey is worth reading.

Thanks for the link. I certainly agree with this:

Max Pacioretty was only the latest; he will not be the last. Arguments and explanations don't matter any more. The NHL has to risk the big steps that are needed: If some of them prove wrong, they'll still be far less wrong than what we have now.

cbuckser
This lengthy piece by Ken Dryden on head injuries in hockey is worth reading.

Excellent article by Dryden. Thanks for the link.

My pleasure. After reading it, I had to share it.

Jesse Martin's father wrote a letter to the editor of the Edmonton Journal on this topic, with which he is too familiar.

Apparently the NHL had already scheduled some new padding to be installed on these stanchions prior to the Chara hit. This was according to Brendan Shanahan (now vp of nhl business/development) in an interview on Hockey Night Live. They also compiled a whole bunch of clips showing collisions with these partitions. They look pretty nasty, but apparently (surprisingly?) have not led to many injuries (possibly why the issue wasn't aggressively pursued).

cbuckser
Jesse Martin's father wrote a letter to the editor of the Edmonton Journal on this topic, with which he is too familiar.

Who then among us should be surprised to learn of an all-toosudden death, over time, in hockey. Could Gary Bettman live with that tragedy?

It seems he could.

But we shouldn't. There's no reason the rules can't be changed to protect the head and neck.