My apologies, folks. It’s
been a while since my last blog post. That’s what happens when life gets in the
way and you overbook yourself. In my other life I am actively involved with my
local drama society, performing in plays and musicals, and sitting on the board
of directors. Life got in the way of my hockey blogging, but I’m back.
And I can’t take it.
Three things have
happened in the last week that make me cringe. First, we have Marc Staal’s
horrible eye injury from slap shot to the face. WARNING: This is not for the
weak stomached. I haven’t listened to the video with audio, but I can only
imagine the amount of pain in his voice…
If I’d ever seen an ad campaign for making visors mandatory in the NHL, this would be it. Between the pucks, the sticks, the arms, the skates, and the shaved ice all flying around down on the playing ice, visors can mean a world of difference. At a regular job, there are safety precautions you take. At my desk job, which isn’t all that dangerous, we use ergonomics to stave off injury and chronic conditions like carpal tunnel syndrome. In construction, you wear steel toe boots and hard hats. In hockey, a visor just seems like the obvious choice.
Granted, never having played hockey myself, I might not understand the fine details of the issue. Maybe it affects sight, and how you see the ice. Maybe you miss the puck because the visor is throwing you off… but you risk that, or you risk a scary injury like the one above, and an injury that could very well have gone much worse and ended a promising career.
Second, we have the David Dziurzunski vs Frazer McLaren fight.
Ask anyone who knows me,
and I actually enjoy a little fighting in hockey. I think it gives players a
way to blow off steam, it gets fans into the game, and a correctly timed fight
can be a huge turning point in a game. This one, though, just turns plain scary
and wasn’t even really key. We’re only about 20 seconds into the game and these
two players drop the gloves. After a couple of hits, poor Dziurzunski goes
down. Out cold. Sprawled on the ice. Watch him fall. I mean really watch him
fall and tell me that isn’t scary.
Finally, we have the
story of Ronny Keller, a Swiss hockey player who this week saw his career cut
short and his life dramatically changed when a race for the puck into the
corner of the ice led to a hit into the boards and an injury that left him
paralyzed. If you follow this link, you’ll get an article from The Province, a B.C. newspaper that has the video
of the injury. Unless you really want to satisfy your morbid curiosity, I
recommend not watching it. It’s horrifying to watch. I regret doing so.
The world of
professional sports can be an extremely dangerous one. Life altering, or life
ending injuries, are not unheard of, and unfortunately, aren’t really outside
the norm. You hear of a story like Ronny Keller and you wonder what, if
anything could have been done to prevent it, a thought that makes you sad to
even think that it was preventable. Because it was. A change in culture that
swings away from unnecessary violence to get the job done means that hit doesn’t
have to happen. Not knowing the context of the play, maybe a change in icing
rules could have meant a difference. Maybe further training and emphasis on
keeping your head up going into the corner means a difference. I don’t know
what the answer is. I just know that maybe if a conversation had happened
earlier, Ronny Keller would be playing hockey with his teammates today.
