THN Archive: NHL Dealt With Epidemic of Stomach Woes in the 1980s

Over the years, the NHL has had a number of different medical maladies — and in this story from THN's exclusive archive, 1980s-era NHLers spoke out about a raft of injuries to their core area.

As the NHL has moved into the modern age, the strains and stresses of the game have changed. 

While there has rightfully been more care and concern for head injuries, hip woes and deep cuts in recent years, a look back through THN’s exclusive Archive shows there once was a time when the epidemic the league dealt with concerned the area in and around the stomach.

Indeed, in this cover story from THN’s Nov. 14, 1986 edition – Vol. 40, Issue 8 – writer Jerry Zgoda put the spotlight on what generally at the time was referred to as “stomach pulls.” In the three seasons leading up to the story, NHL stars, including Chicago’s Al Secord, Hartford’s Sylvain Turgeon and Calgary’s Lanny McDonald all missed time with stomach problems. Secord missed 95 games over two seasons thanks to stomach woes, and he told Zgoda the injury dated back to the 1983-84 campaign.

Unfortunately, many other NHLers had similar issues.

“At first it didn’t seem like a big thing,” McDonald said in the story. “But it just didn’t seem to get any better. What they said would take a week to heal became 10 days and then two weeks and then two months. And even then, after two months, it was way too early. I should’ve waited longer.”

Zgoda talked to players, medical experts, trainers and hockey people for the story, and there was an overarching sense of exasperation and wonder as to why stomach problems had become so prominent.

“You don’t look hurt,” Minnesota North Stars forward Todd Bergen said. “You don’t wear a cast, you don’t even have a bandage. You look at a big, strong kid who has a broken leg and you know it’s going to be eight to 10 weeks. You look at a big, strong kid with torn stomach muscles and it’s difficult for GMs and coaches to understand it could take a year or longer. But it does take that long sometimes. There’s nothing you can do without using your stomach muscles, whether it’s shooting a puck, getting out of bed, throwing a football or hitting a golf ball.”

“Maybe (the injuries have) something to do with all the weight training,” said North Stars GM Lou Nanne. “Players have just started to get into it the last couple of years, when all these stomach injuries started happening, and maybe they’re too bulked up and not flexible enough.”

Hockey people looked for answers everywhere.

“We thought it might have been some of the new equipment,” North Stars trainer Doc Rose said. “Some guys weren’t wearing suspenders (for their pants) anymore and they were taping themselves in so tightly. We thought that might be a reason, but Secord was wearing suspenders and he still got hurt. We just don’t know.”

Since then, training regiments and rehab assignments have mitigated the number of stomach injuries to NHLers. But as Chicago-area osteopath Dr. Robert Kappler told Zgoda, high-impact training without care for the core was a big part of the problem.

“Pro athletes approach their exercise so aggressively,” Kappler said. “The want to do a lot of work and do it fast and they tend to focus on the upper extremities – the pectorals, the triceps – and the legs and they forget the trunk has to be developed first. They don’t pay attention to the integrated total.”

They do now, and hockey players are healthier for it.

(And don’t forget, to gain access to THN’s full 76-year archive, subscribe to our magazine.)

Vol. 40, Issue 8, November 14, 1986

By Jerry Zgoda

Every year, it seems, there is one injury that tops the National Hockey League medical charts. Last season, for instance, was the Year of the Eye Injury.

This season, the eyes have been overtaken by talk of torn, pulled, severed and sore stomach muscles. It has become the malady that has players, trainers, coaches and general managers speculating about its origin and its treatment.

“You never heard of stomach pulls when I was playing,” said Minnesota North Star general manager Lou Nanne, who played 11 years and retired in 1978. “Well, maybe there were one or two guys in that time, but nothing like now. It seems like now you have a new one every day.”

The Year of the Stomach Pull actually began gaining momentum three years ago, when Chicago’s Al Secord missed 95 games over two seasons because of stretched muscles. It continued with Calgary’s Lanny McDonald, among others, and now the list of victims has grown to include Vancouver’s Stu Kulak. Dave Richter and Dan Woodley, Minnesota’s Todd Bergen and Hartford’s Sylvain Turgeon.

Secord, McDonald, and Richter all eventually recovered after rest and recuperation, but it’s a long and frustrating process that can take up to two years. Kulak, Woodley and Bergen all required surgery to repair muscle tears and only Kulak is back and playing now, after missing two seasons. Turgeon is still in the never-never land of not knowing when he will be able to play again.

All of the above have been lumped into one category, under the heading “Stomach Pulls.” But each injury is a little different and nobody is quite sure why they are suddenly happening with such frequency.

Secord can’t trace his injury back to one specific play, but he thinks he was hit in a game against Detroit early in the 1983-84 season. A few games later, he couldn’t move. McDonald and Kulak can only remember their stomachs growing sore over a period of a week or so. Bergen, however, can pinpoint when he was injured.

“It was Jan. 10, 1985,” said Bergen, who was playing for Philadelphia at the time. “We had a face-off in the Chicago end, Tim Kerr drew it back into my skates and I turned and reached and tried to get a shot off toward the net. I could hear the muscles pop.”

When they first felt the pain in the groin and the stomach, McDonald, Secord, Kulak and Bergen all figured they had just suffered a minor muscle pull that would go away within a week.

“At first it didn’t seem like a big thing,” McDonald said. “But it just didn’t seem to get any better. What they said would take a week to heal became 10 days and then two weeks and then two months. And even then, after two months, it was way too early. I should have waited longer.”

Perhaps the biggest problem is the nature of the injury itself.

“You don’t look hurt,” Bergen said. “You don’t wear a cast, you don’t even have a bandage. You look at a big, strong kid who has a broken leg and you know it’s going to be eight to 10 weeks. You look at a big, strong kid with tom stomach muscles and it’s difficult for GMs and coaches to understand it could take a year or longer. But it does take that long sometimes. There’s nothing you can’t do without using your stomach muscles, whether it’s shooting a puck, getting out of bed, throwing a football or hitting a golf ball.”

It took Secord, Kulak and Bergen away from the game for at least a year each because it took doctors so long to diagnose the injury. Secord said he visited nine or 10 doctors over a year’s time and he tried all sorts of therapy—whirlpool, ice, electric stimulation. Finally, out of desperation, Secord visited a bone specialist, Chicago osteopath Dr. Robert Kappler.

“Secord was the first baffling challenge,” said Kappler, who has since seen most of hockey’s stomach-pull patients. “He had been all over and he came to me on his own. He didn’t want anybody to know about it. It was our secret.”

Kappler determined what the problem was: Secord’s leg had been pushed up into his hip, which pushed his hip out to the side. The muscles that attach from the hip to the groin were stretched to their maximum so that every time Secord took a full stride, he tore the muscles a little. Kappler manipulated the leg, bringing it back down where it was supposed to be, and recommended stretching exercises to Secord. Secord was back playing within a month.

“If I knew then what I know now, I would have been back playing within two to three days,” Secord said.

Kulak said he visited 13 or 14 doctors, including Kappler. He was given laser therapy and acupuncture, but finally after a year and a half, a tear was found in his stomach. A Vancouver doctor performed surgery in October, 1985 and Kulak was back playing by February. Bergen said his injury was first diagnosed as a ruptured appendix, then as a ruptured kidney.

“They finally said, ‘Well, we can’t find anything, so it must be torn stomach muscles,’” Bergen said. A special x-ray eventually revealed a hole the size of a quarter in the stomach wall and a Minneapolis doctor inserted a synthetic mesh around the hole to strengthen the muscles.

Richter missed parts of the 1983-84 and 1984-85 seasons with the North Stars because, Kappler said, he simply wore out his stomach muscles.

“His problem was that he was doing 800 sit-ups a day,” Kappler said. “The muscle got tired and it quit working.”

The injuries may be different from one another, but Kappler said there is one common thread — most of them don’t begin in the stomach. Some injuries begin with muscles in the thigh, the groin or the back and the stomach muscles have to work overtime to help compensate for the original injury. Often, the stomach muscles aren’t strong enough for the extra work and they end up over-stressed.

The question now is why stomachs are breaking down.

“Maybe it has something to do with all the weight training,” said Nanne. “Players have just started to get into it the last couple of years, when all this stomach injuries started happening, and maybe they’re too bulked up and not flexible enough.”

Said McDonald: “There is so much off-ice conditioning now that maybe the body won’t take it all.”

Kappler says there is no evidence that weights or other conditioning methods are to blame. Neither is there supporting evidence for a theory that was circulating among NHL trainers when stomach pulls first started happening.

“We thought it might have been some of the new equipment,” North Star trainer Doc Rose said. “Some guys weren’t wearing suspenders (for their pants) anymore and they were taping themselves in so tightly. We thought that might be a reason, but Secord was wearing suspenders and he still got hurt. We just don’t know.”

Kappler says he doesn’t know either. But he does say that the stomach and groin are the areas most neglected by pro athletes.

“Pro athletes approach their exercise so aggressively,” Kappler said. “They want to do a lot of work and do it fast and they tend to focus on the upper extremities — the pectorals, the triceps — and the legs and they forget the trunk has to be developed first. They don’t pay attention to the integrated total.”

Perhaps the best result of the rash of stomach injuries is the recognition that it is a problem. Kappler said he doubts that nobody used to have stomach pulls back in the old days. It probably was that they were never diagnosed properly.

“People are more aware of the problem now, where before players may just have got washed out of their careers,” Kappler said.

“That probably did happen a lot,” agreed McDonald. “Fortunately, I didn’t disappear and neither did the rest of the guys.”

The Hockey News Archive is a vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 articles exclusively for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit the archives at THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com