The Many Injuries Of The NHL

The NHL is having a crazy year. For some reason, there are many players that are dropping like flies. Like this man, Mathieu Garon, goalie for Tampa Bay Lightning, suffered a lower body injury during a game against the Ottawa Senators. To name a few injured goalies, there is Mathieu Garon (TB), Tomas Vokoun (WAS), Rick DiPietro (NYI), Jimmy Howard (DET), and Niklas Backstrom (MIN). The fact that so many goalies are getting injured is a big problem. What happens when every starting goalie is injured and everyone has to bring a goalie out of the AHL? Obviously a chance for an AHL goalie to prove himself, but that is still a bad thing for the NHL.

My argument all year has been that fact of the captain injuries. The list of captains is as follows: Jonathan Toews (CHI), Brendan Morrow (DAL), Nicklas Lidstrom (DET), Mikko Koivu (MIN), Brian Gionta (MON), Chris Pronger (PHI), Sidney Crosby (PIT), and Vincent Lecavalier (TB). That is 8 leaders who have fallen ill to injury, some more brutal than others. But how do we prevent injuries. Play with safety foam fads and pad the boards? If that’s the case, we’ll keep our chances of getting hurt. Hockey is a great place to hit people legally and get a few goals and excitement all in the same night. There’s no need to make a safer arena to avoid injury, but players can stop doing stupid hits.

For instance, when a player leaps off their feet to complete a check on someone and aims for their head, that will cause injury. There is no reason any player should leave their feet to hit someone while in the air. It’s uncalled for. Brendan Shanahan has been cracking down hard on this issue as NHL’s chief player disciplinarian. Many suspensions have been given to ensure this kind of activity stops.

Another example is Niklas Kronwall. I love watching him “Kronwall” someone. It is such a good feeling knowing the man on your home team can lay a massive hit like he can. With that aside, the hits leave his victim wounded. The majority of them stay on the ice until they are assisted off. Many players like to try and fight him after the huge hit because they know he just injured someone they needed to win. My next example is P.K. Subban. He lays massive hits on players. These often end in injury as well. This also goes along with Dion Phaneuf. He is the same way, and notice how they are all defensemen? Think about that and see how you view them now.

The reason there are so many injuries is because players aren’t playing safe. They think hitting some other player in the head against the board is a grand idea. These players are being picked off one by one by Mr. Shanahan for what they are doing, and hopefully it stops them. This is going to continue to be an issue unless the players can realize that they need to keep everyone else healthy so they too can play.