Too Many Injuries
By Adrian Dater
October 30, 2009
News flash: injuries happen in hockey. But it’s starting to become a hot topic among NHL people. Everybody is noticing that more guys seem to be getting hurt, and with increasing seriousness.
Pittsburgh Penguins fans and management all went to bed Thursday night relieved that it appears Evgeni Malkin will miss only 2-3 weeks with a shoulder strain. But he was just the latest high-profile player to go down, and that’s not good for a league that needs every big name in the lineup it can get.
Along with Malkin, stars such as Roberto Luongo, Ilya Kovalchuk, Johan Franzen, Andrei Markov, Daniel Sedin, Simon Gagne, Marian Hossa, Phil Kessel and Milan Lucic are all watching games in sport coats these days.
Plus, GMs are all worried right now about their goalies getting run. There have definitely been increases in the number of collisions between goalies and opposing attackers, to the point where some managers want something done by NHL brass. Nobody wants the awful “no goal, toe in the crease” rules of a few years ago back, but goalies are definitely getting run more often again. Luongo’s cracked rib that has him out happened because of a puck hitting him, but it could have been aggravated by collisions in his last game, against Detroit.
The other injuries could all just be bad luck, but the hits just seem to be getting harder and harder, with less distinction being made about who gets hit. Jonathan Toews and David Booth have already been
hammered going across the middle. Serves them right, purists say, but that’s also why all the league’s enforcers plead every year to get rid of the instigator rule. But that’s only going to do so much.
Some GMs think it’s an equipment thing, with the shoulder pads guys wear now more like suits of armor. The league took away the rock hard elbow “pads” of recent years, but the shoulder “caps” players wear are still too dangerous to many.
Is this a “lack of respect” thing, a typical storyline to some pundits when injuries in hockey come up? Well first off, hockey has never been a sport about “respect.” It’s a brutal, last-man-standing sport, so some of those tired storylines are just so many dead trees. On the other hand, a lot of top guys are getting hurt, and it’s a worry to a sport where revenues are still largely tied to gate attendance.
Nobody wants to pay 100 bucks a ticket to see their hero sitting in the press box munching pop corn in a shiny suit.
Adrian Dater covers the NHL for the Denver Post
