Injuries have long been part of hockey -- but 40 years ago, the NHL faced an injury crisis. And in this cover story, THN pinpointed all the reasons for the league's injury epidemic.

For as long as hockey has been played, injuries have been part of the game. But in this cover story from THN's Feb. 1, 1985 edition -- Vol. 38, Issue 18 -- writer Barry Meisel put the NHL's injury crisis under the microscope, and broke down the reasons so many players were sidelined with health woes:

CALL AN AMBULANCE! THE NHL’S FACING AN INJURY EPIDEMIC

By Barry Meisel

Ouch.

Injuries, vintage 1984-85, have become a real pain in the National Hockey League. It has not been a very good year.

No, it is not a mirage. Although injuries have received more recognition this season because of the big names falling victim, it is not publicity hype. The nagging number of knees, shuddering sum of shoulders and bevy of broken bones have been on an alarming rise.

Those who report on goals and assists have become fluent in tibias and fibulas. No longer do we run to the medical textbooks to distinguish between a grade one and grade two separation. This season we can easily elect an all-star team, an all-rookie team and an all-abdominal muscle-pull squad.

Arthroscopy is an easy word to spell.

Thanks mainly to the New York Rangers (192 man-games lost), Calgary Flames (153), Minnesota North Stars (152), Boston Bruins (128), Vancouver Canucks (118), Philadelphia Flyers Cl 10) and New York Islanders (105), the NHL’s medical report showed an 18 per cent increase in the number of man-games lost (each game a player misses equals one man-game) between Christmas 1983 and Christmas 1984.

“Injuries?” deadpanned Ranger GM Craig Patrick, who somehow has managed to keep his sanity and sense of humor. “Why would you want to talk to me?”

The Rangers’ team picture was shot by an X-ray machine. The New Yorkers spent more time in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital than they did in Madison Square Garden or their Rye, NY, training base. In their first 43 games, they had lost 23 different players to 37 different injuries for a whopping 262 man-games lost. Ron Greschner (separated shoulder), Anders Hedberg (eye), Tom Laidlaw (ruptured spleen), Don Maloney (broken leg), Mark Osborne (hip flexor), Mark Pavelich (broken leg) and Simo Saarinen (tom knee ligaments) were hit with major injuries. Everybody else—only Mike Rogers and Reijo Ruotsalainen did not miss any of the first 43—had at least one minor ill.

Calgary has (or had) lost Jamie Macoun (fractured cheekbone), Lanny McDonald (stomach muscles) and Doug Risebrough (groin).

Minnesota has (or had) missed Dino Ciccarelli (broken wrist), Craig Hartsburg (hip), Paul Holmgren (shoulder surgery) and Willi Plett (dislocated shoulder).

Boston is without Gord Kluzak (knee) and Barry Pederson (broken hand followed by tumor surgery) for the season.

Vancouver has (or had) missed Ron Delorme (tom knee ligaments), Rick Lanz (twisted neck), Peter McNab (damaged knee) and Patrik Sundstrom (broken wrist).

Philadelphia has been without Bill Barber (knee surgery), Peter Zezel (broken hand), Ilkka Sinisalo (back spastps), and Glen Cochrane (fractured kneecap) has only recently returned.

The Islanders are currently without Pat LaFontaine (mononucleosis), Bobby Nystrom (band), Bob Bourne (hand), Tomas Jonsson (shoulder) and Ken Morrow (knee).

And that’s just a sampling. Want more? Quebec’s Michel Goulet (broken thumb), Washington’s Al Jensen (back), Pittsburgh’s Rick Kehoe (pinched nerve in neck), Edmonton’s Mark Messier (knee), Winnipeg’s Brian Mullen (knee), Detroit’s Brad Park (knee), Buffalo’s Lindy Ruff (shoulder surgery), Montreal’s Bobby Smith (broken jaw), Chicago’s Darryl Sutter (broken ankle), Al Secord (stomach muscles), Curt Fraser (fractured cheekbone), Bob MacMillan (separated shoulder), Hartford’s Sylvain Turgeon (stomach muscles), and Toronto’s Bill Derlago (fractured shoulder).

The growing problem was on the agenda when the 21 general managers met in Chicago in December. The league plans to take an extensive look at the injury report analysis that is filed at the end of each season and the GMs plan to examine equipment and training camp methods.

Everybody wants to know why there’s an increase in injuries.

“I don’t think you can say it’s one thing or another yet,” said Buffalo Sabre coach and GM Scott Bowman. “Unless we get conclusive evidence, we’re just talking. But it seems like there’s quite a lot of knee and shoulder injuries.”

Bowman was speaking one afternoon in New York. That night, in a 2-2 tie with the Rangers, the Sabres temporarily lost right winger Sean McKenna (hit through the Sabres’ bench door by Grant Ledyard) and defenseman Jim Schoenfeld (bruised right ankle after stopping a shot). The Rangers played half that game without Tomas Sandstrom, who absorbed a Jerry Korab elbow and suffered a bruised cheekbone.

“It’s getting to the point where you pretty well need a taxi squad,” Bowman said after the game. “The Islanders, you saw what happened to them last season when they were hit hard by injuries. When I was in Montreal, we always had four or five guys in the stands. By the end, they were the ones who helped us win it. Guys play hard and injuries are part of the game. If you play hard, you get hurt.”

Why so many this season?

Hypotheses run rampant whenever trend weaves its way through the NHL’s threads. Doctors, trainers, GMs and coaches have come up with four possible reasons for the growing sick list.

1. Protective equipment has not been improved enough to keep pace with today’s bigger and faster player.

2. The 23-day training camp demands too much, too soon from a player.

3. Weight training has done more harm than good.

4. The Canada Cup.

THE EQUIPMENT

“Equipment has not kept close (to the players’ needs),” said Rangers’ team physician Dr. Norman Scott. “It’s terrible. Shoulder equipment is useless. Most of the equipment is point contact. The force of a check is being directed right at a particular part of the body.”

“Take a picture of a football player today as compared to 10 years ago,” said Edmonton’s athletic therapist, Peter Millar.

“Look at the difference. Take a picture of hockey players 10 years apart. There hasn’t been anything drastically redesigned. There’s lighter material, but nothing dramatic.”

“Today’s gloves are light as a feather,” said New Jersey general manager Max McNab. “You throw them up in the air and they don’t come down. And the skates are razor-sharp. I don’t know how the players skate with them.”

In an ever-competitive age, players seek an edge. They want the sharpest skates, the lightest gloves and pants, the most comfortable shoulder, elbow and leg pads.

They are only hurting themselves, say three representatives from large equipment manufacturers.

“We can make whatever the NHL wants,” explained Jim Geary, the liason to the NHL for Cooper Canada, Ltd., the Toronto-based manufacturer that supplies a majority of the NHL’s equipment.

“But we make what the players will wear. Why should we make it if they’re not going to wear it? Somebody has to tell us to make it.

“We’ve come up with a redesigned shoulder pad that is designed to prevent separations and dislocations. About 15 pair are being worn throughout the league, four by Boston. This pad’s been out a year, but (a majority of) the players won’t wear it. What you’re seeing now, though, is the GMs are starting to force them to wear it. Now there’s a little interest because of the injuries.”

Bill Else, vice president of sales for CCM, said that his company can supply whatever the NHL requests. The fault, he said, lies with the players.

“Players doctor equipment,” he said. “Some forwards wear shin pads we could sell to children 10 to 12 years old. It’s come to the point where we have to control what players are wearing. What looks to be finally happening is that the GMs are saying, ‘It’s a serious problem. Let’s do something about it.’”

David Angas, North American sales and marketing manager for JOFA, echoed the sentiments of his competitors.

“We’re dealing with the male, macho image,” he said. “These guys think they’re iron men and they can get away wearing less protective equipment. But it’s the owners’ fault, really. From a business point of view, I wouldn’t want to be paying a six-figure salary to a guy who’s hurt all the time. It’s up to the owners, as the players’ employer, to make them wear the best equipment available. It’s out there. It’s just that the owners and managers are ignorant to it.”

TRAINING CAMP

“It’s absolutely ridiculous for management and the players’ association to agree on that kind of training camp,” said Ranger coach Herb Brooks, discussing the 23-day schedule that was written into the last contract between the owners and the NHLPA. “Training camp should be what it says, a time to train. These are the assets of our corporation, the players’ bodies. We can’t throw their bodies to the wolves.”

The players demanded a shorter training camp. Owners demanded the dollars raked in from pre-season exhibition games. It was pure greed on both sides.

So what you have is an exhaustive training camp schedule that sees teams playing pre-season games less than a week after camp opens. Too much, too soon.

“Players are going into camp in better shape,” Patrick said, partially refuting this theory. “But in years gone by, camps were longer.”

Players who are fatigued are more susceptible to muscle injuries. Although they may arrive at training camp in excellent shape, they are hardly ready for the pace of four games per week—not to mentiog intrasquad games designed to gauge ability.

Rookies competing for jobs that veterans are trying to hold set a tempo that creates the nagging ills.

WEIGHT TRAINING

“I don’t believe players who should weigh 170 or 180 can carry the weight when they bulk up to 190 or 200 pounds,” said Doug Carpenter, New Jersey’s freshman head Coach. “I don’t think their knees can carry the extra weight.”

But the stakes are high, so everybody looks for an edge. An athlete needs to be bigger and stronger. But when something gives, it tends to be his musculature.

“I had guys come out of junior and into Salt Lake City very fluid,” Hartford coach Jack Evans said early this season, referring to his association with the St. Louis Blues’ old Central Hockey League affiliate. “They’d go up to St. Louis, get into those weights, and I’d get them back the next year and couldn’t believe it was the same player. They look like King Kong, but they couldn’t handle the stick.”

“We are probably guilty of overtraining,” said Dr. Scott.

“We have to find a balance. But it’s tough for a young kid, trying to find a job on a team, to listen to someone saying, ‘Take it easy. Go slow.’

“Down the road,” Scott added, “I think we’re going to have to establish a standard training program. Or at least guidelines agreed to by the 21 teams. You just don’t say go and do Nautilus all summer.”

CANADA CUP

The last Canada Cup year (1981) was a bad one for us,” Dr. Scott recalled. “We lost (Anders) Hedberg and (Ulf) Nilsson. They were hurt, and badly. These guys cannot expect to stay in shape at the level we expect all-year round. We’re taxing their physical stamina and ability for too long a time.

“It’s a well-known fact. You can make a graph of the body at maximum peak condition. After that peak, there is a precipitous drop and there’s the injury factor.”

Scott was referring to those players injured after the tournament, which asked NHL players (who had completed the 1983-84 season only a few months earlier) to report for their country’s training camps in July and August.

Millar, who was a member of Team Canada’s training staff, disagreed with the Canada Cup hypothesis. Eight Edmonton Oilers—Glenn Anderson, Paul Coffey, Grant Fuhr, Randy Gregg, Wayne Gretzky, Charlie Huddy, Kevin Lowe and Mark Messier-competed. Only Messier and Gregg suffered a major injury this season.

The fact of the matter is that nobody has the answers to a question stuffed with variables.

“This is a completely new project,” said Phil Scheuer, the director of administration in the NHL’s Montreal office and the man who will head the injury investigation. “We’re just beginning, really. We want to find out how many knees there are compared to shoulders, how many injuries are the result of penalized infractions as opposed to unpenalized infractions. There are no conclusions, nothing close to them yet.”

The ambulance siren is wailing. The NHL limps on.