Hosting, Small Ice, and Face Shields

[Jeff Hopkins \'82]

The only problem there, Greg, is he still has the option to use the shield, even though the NC$$ doesn't make it mandatory.   So the "sitting out" option is somewhat extreme.  The only way that flies is if he was forced to remove his shield by his coach and chose to sit out instead of risking injury.

BTW, while we're talking paired words, how about "hazardous chemicals".  As a ChemE, that's one that drives me nuts.

JH

[Tub(a)]

[q]Highly unlikely that a player could sue over an injury sustained during a sporting event. Sports is one of the few places where the "assumption of risk" defense still operates with some force.

Suing a helmet or face shield maufacturer is perhaps another story, but the player would have to show that the product was in some way defective (meaning that it did not do something which it was intended to do). Hard to argue that an injury like Travis Roy's was in any way caused by defective equipment.[/q]

Couldn't you sue the player that caused the injury, theoretically anyways?

[Steve Marciniec \'85]

Don Cherry was also against helmets (and may still be for all I know).  When he was the Bruins' coach back in the late 70's, when a majority of NHL players had begun to wear helmets, only two of his players wore them.  He used to have colorful quotes like "Some of these guys wear helmets thick enough to stop a shot from a Colt 45 and they're still afraid to go into the corners".

[gwm3]

Grant MacIntyre '05 wrote:

Couldn't you sue the player that caused the injury, theoretically anyways?

Well, consent is a defense to battery.  I think that agreeing to play a sport is generally considered "consent" to certain forms of bodily contact that would be tortious in the outside world.  It's possible that if a player did something extreme, and outside what might ordinarily be expected in the course of play, then one might be able to argue that the injured player had not consented to that type of conduct.  

On the other hand, the victim's consent is not a defense to criminal liability for battery.  I believe Marty McSorley was charged with criminal assault for his attack on Donald Brashear a few years ago, but I don't know of any other instances of things like that happening.

[cbuckser]

[Q]I believe Marty McSorley was charged with criminal assault for his attack on Donald Brashear a few years ago, but I don't know of any other instances of things like that happening.[/Q]

Dino Ciccarelli is intimately familiar with another instance of an NHL player being prosecuted for a stick foul.

[Mike Hedrick 01]

Hehe, he might have had a point with some guys.  Grapes has some interesting viewpoints on equipment and conduct, some of which might actually warrant some attention from both the NHL and NCAA.   Lately, he's been on a crusade against hard elbow pads because he feels they are a head injury risk.  

He actually advocates against dirty play of any kind.  He hates stickwork and is absolutely disgusted by hits from behind. (He's been a major advocate of the "stop sign" program in youth hockey.) In addition he has been calling for the NHL to adopt an automatic icing rule like the NCAA has before someone gets seriously injured racing on a touch up.

I will grant Cherry and the NCAA coaches that there seems to be a much greater tendency in the NCAA than the NHL for the sticks to get high, especially in the scrums.   Now, I haven't seen many AHL or CHL/OHL/WHL games lately, so I can't really comment on the minor and junior leages.

[Robb03]

Addressing hard elbow pads, I believe they are still a good idea. While they may create more opportunities for head injuries, it takes an elbow to cause an injury, not a pad. Eliminating dirty elbows will do better than changing pads.

Additionally, my personal experience with the softer foam pads is they blow. This year I injured a major nerve (ulnar) in my left elbow, probably from a hockey fall. Surgery was required to fix it. Noted, this happened after my switch to softer elbow pads. Come next season, though, I'm chaning back to the hard plastic kind, if for my benefit alone.

Also, was McSorley after the whistle? And as I remember it was from behind and had nothing at all to do with the game play.

[Mike Hedrick 01]

I think the McSorley incident was during play, but nowhere near it.

[Greg Berge]

Cherry's the Bob Dornan of hockey.  He's a moron, but he's incredibly funny.  He actually had A Brief Moment of Sanity a couple of years ago when he came out full bore in favor of automatic icing -- it shocked the hell out of everybody since he's usually ranting about deporting Europeans or The Original Six or whatever.

IIRC, and I probably don't, the McSorley Incident actually caused the stoppage, and hence was during play.  It was miles behind the play, in any case.



Post Edited (04-30-03 04:55)

[ugarte]

I didn't even see what the big deal was about the McSorley play. Yes, it was a high-stick.  Yes, it should have resulted in a game DQ and maybe, if the league was adopting a get-tough attitude, a short suspension becuase McS was retaliating because Brashear had beat his ass earlier in the game, IIRC.  

But the stickwork didn't cause Brashear's injury.  Brashear got hurt becuase his helmet fell off as he fell backwards, and his head smacked against the ice.

The whole thing was blown out of proportion and the criminal prosecution was a travesty.

[Tub(a)]

Whoa now ::twitch::  

Brashear definitely was unconscious as he fell to the ice, as a result of the hit. The hit itself knocked off the helmet!

[ugarte]

Grant MacIntyre '05 wrote:

Whoa now ::twitch::  

Brashear definitely was unconscious as he fell to the ice, as a result of the hit. The hit itself knocked off the helmet!

I always looked to me like the helmet came off because of the traditional loose chinstrap in the NHL, not the impact of the hit.  And it also looked like Brashear just lost balance a la Aaron Kim.

If you are right, what follows from my assumption would be revised to be, shall we say, more human. The prosecution was still a travesty, though



Post Edited (04-30-03 14:57)

[jd212]

Yeah, that's like saying if someone dies from complications due to surgery for a gunshot wound, the person who shot her/him didn't commit murder. Um, his helmet wouldn't have fallen off otherwise. Do you see a lot of other instances when guys' helmets have just fallen off, other than when punches are being thrown? People need to be held accountable. There is no place for that in sports. Just like those stupid baseball fans need to be held accountable. Otherwise it's not gonna stop.

[ugarte]

Jason wrote:

Yeah, that's like saying if someone dies from complications due to surgery for a gunshot wound, the person who shot her/him didn't commit murder.

Yeah, it's exactly like that! ::rolleyes::  Death by gunshot due to complications from surgery is often a lesser charge than murder (manslaughter, anyone?) because intent is absent, and the fault can be spread around.  

I noted that the whack to the head was the precipitating cause of the injury in my own recollection of the incident, but I disagree about how much of the blame for the injury can be attributed to McSorley.  Given the accepted norms for contact in hockey, the difference between the highlight reel hits and the McSorley chop are not equivalent to the difference between 2 minutes for roughing and an assault prosecution, regardless of the extent of the injury. Do people need to be held accountable? Yes.  But that isn't our debate.  The debate is over what "accountable" means.

You disagree with me?  Fine, feel free to do so.  But I didn't treat the topic childishly, using reductionist analogies and hyperbole to make my point.  You should do the same.

[Greg Berge]

I don't think the analogy was childish.  It may have been ill-chosen.  Here's a better one.  You and I are walking along a path in pitch black darkness.  I club you over the head.  You fall over and we happen to be on a bridge spanning a chasm. The ensuing drop kills you.

Am I guilty of murder one?  Probably not.

Am I going to jail for a loooooooooooong time?  You betcha.



Post Edited (04-30-03 17:27)