As I was sifting through some hockey research articles over the weekend – this is when I found the sports hernia rehab case study I went over in THIS post – I came across a simple abstract that I wanted to share with you looking at the most common injuries in professional hockey players.
The study looked at all of the injuries from a Swiss Professional Hockey team over the course of four seasons. They defined a minor injury as 1-7 days of time lost, moderate injuries as 8-28 days lost and major injuries as more than 28-days lost.
Here are their key findings…
- Most injuries were moderate based on their definition (51%) followed by minor (36%) and major (13%)
- Forwards lost the most time due to injury
- Collisions between players were the most common mechanism for moderate and major injuries.
- The knee and shoulder were the most frequently injured areas of the body
- Defensemen had a higher incidence of concussion
- The beginning of training camp had the highest incidence of injury with and without time lost.
Conclusions
- More attention to off-season training may reduce the risk of injuries during training camp
Now, we cannot draw a direct correlation between these findings and the true statistics from the NHL or minor hockey as different leagues and different levels of hockey may have unique injury patterns, but it was reassuring to read that the injury rates were similar to that of other contact sports and that better summer training can be used to drive down the incidence of injury early in the season.
So there are your hockey fun facts for today!
Cheers,
M
PS – here is the reference… Professional Ice Hockey Injuries: A 4 Years Prospective Study. G. Ornon, D Fritschy, J-L Ziltener, J Menetrey British Journal Of Sports Medicine 2011; 45:366
PPS – if you want to make sure you are getting the right off-season training this year click HERE if you are a SKATER or click HERE if you are a GOALIE.