Still Needs a Title
National League Hockey is one of America’s favorite sports. People from not only the US, but also boarding countries across the world find hockey to be a sport to be a daily pleasure to watch. Going to see your favorite team in action, as well as seeing your favorite players skate around the ice is a treasure to hockey fans. No one goes to a hockey game expecting to see their icon walk off the ice and never return to the game However an injury on the ice could not only sadden the fans, but also hurt the player enough that they are out of the game for weeks, or even forever. Connor Bedard from the Chicago Blackhawks is an example of a gruesome injury that had occurred on the ice due to a lack of protective gear. Bedard collided with one opponent on the opposing team. This caused him to hit the ice at a high rate of speed and immense force. This resulted in a broken jaw which needed emergency surgery. Had the bottom half of his face been more protected, it would have made the injury less serious or possibly even prevented it.
A Hockey player tends to spend their whole adolescent life playing hockey and preparing for the National League teams. From the time a child starts playing hockey, safety is at the top of learning subjects. During the Junior League players are required to wear full covering helmets. This helps to prevent facial fractures during the game. Adults, as young as 18 make it to the NHL, because they are so young their bones may not have fully developed or fused together by the time they get to play at their first National League game. When they move up to the big league the helmets get a little different, it is only covering their head and their eyes. An article from Sage Journals explains how this causes more facial features during the game when a collision happens on the ice. 73.5 out of 1000 players contracted a facial injury during a game wearing an NHL regulated helmet. However only 16 out of 1000 players received a facial injury due to the fact that they were wearing a fully covering helmet. This number is significant enough to make you think about the real effects wearing a half shield has on a player compared to a full covering helmet.
The number of minor brain traumas, as well as concussions has risen over the years and will continue to rise in the NHL community. An Article from BMJ Sports Medicine explains how even though the NHL has added more penalties such as checking from behind, and head checking it has still not done enough to bring down the number of injuries down significantly enough. This poses the question of whether the NHL is really doing enough regulation to protect the players from injury causing them to be taken out of the game for a short period, or the rest of their career. An example of a regulation provided by the NHL is as follows. A Matching penalty shall be placed on any player or team official who deliberately attempts to or deliberately injures an opponent, official, team official or spectator in any manner. While placing a penalty on a player may seem effective, in the long run it does not do much. Once they get out of the penalty box, they are able to commit another offense that could pose a risk of injury. What we should be doing, is any player that breaks a regulation rule that involves physical fighting or injury should be ejected from the game. This would get the point across that this is not acceptable and will cause you to lose a significant amount of playing time should you choose to cause physical harm to an individual.
Chances are when you go to a hockey game a fight will break out at some point. Hockey is known to have a stronger masculinity dominance surrounding it. This in a way causes more fights in order to prove who is more masculine. The NHL does allow fighting on the ice, while the Olympics, as well as international teams do not allow fighting on the ice. While at the game you might find it exciting, it does not happen at every game. A “fight” during a hockey game consists of two or more players removing their gloves and helmets and then they proceed to throw punches at each other. This would then result in all of the players involved receiving a penalty. However this does not send the message that it is unacceptable to partake in an activity such as fighting. With Olympics being such a prestigious sporting event, they do not allow fighting. The International Ice Hockey Federation states that if you participate in fighting you will be ejected from the game as they do not find it acceptable, or regulate it. This poses the question of what does the Olympics see wrong with fighting on the ice that the NHL does not?
The bottom line is that by the NHL not taking more precautionary measures, and regulating fights on the ice it is causing more injuries than any other sport. If we added more protective gear, and followed the same rules as the Olympics and International teams we would have a safer game. Taking away fights on the ice, and adding more protective gear takes nothing away from the enjoyability of the game. Instead it creates a safer game for the players. Safer gear could include a full face covering helmet, and or neck guards to prevent an interaction between the blade of ones skate and a players neck. While concussions can occur without fighting on the ice, they can still occur when a collision happens in the ice between two players. In order to make the game overall safer more regulations needs to take place. We should be taking a page out of the Olympics rule book, and follow what they are implementing.
References
Playing rules – attempt to injure & deliberate injury. Ontario Ball Hockey Federation. (n.d.). https://ontarioballhockeyfederation.ca/playing-rules-attempt-to-injure-deliberate-injury/#:~:text=(a)%20A%20Match%20penalty%20shall,or%20spectator%20in%20any%20manner.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0887302×07303626 | request PDF. (n.d.-a). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328039672_httpjournalssagepubcomdoiabs1011770887302X07303626
IIHF official rule book 2021/22. (n.d.-b). https://blob.iihf.com/iihf-media/iihfmvc/media/downloads/rule%20book/2021_22_iihf_rulebook_v1_1.pdf
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Counterintuitive Spring 2024 
Can I have 45 minutes of feedback please- HockeyFan
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OK, HockeyFan. I’m starting at 8PM.
—This is a slow start, HockeyFan. If you had content to burn, you wouldn’t want to waste nearly 100 words to say that injuries can cost players games.
—Now, if you had a grisly anecdote about an injury that could have been avoided by protective gear, THAT would make a good opening. You’re going to compare facial injuries between levels of play, but we don’t know yet how many “star” players miss games every year or how many players total miss how many games per season after injuries that could have been prevented by better gear. Those numbers should be easy to come by.
https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/20/5/347.short
Results A total of 50.9% of all NHL players missed at least one game within a season of play, and injuries represented a total salary cost of approximately US$218 million per year. Concussions alone amounted to a salary loss of US$42.8 million a year. Head/neck injuries and leg/foot injuries were the most expensive in terms of overall cost, while head/neck and shoulder injuries had the highest mean cost.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/48/1/57.short
—Both of those above, which I found in a minute by searching NHL head injuries per season in Google Scholar, have juicy numbers on the first page in the abstract. Really simple, really useful.
Results On the basis of the estimated athlete exposures (AEs), the overall regular season incidence density was 15.6 injuries/1000 AEs and 0.7 illnesses/1000 AEs. Based on recorded time on ice, the injury rates were roughly threefold higher at 49.4 injuries/1000 player game-hours and 2.4 illnesses/1000 player game-hours. There was a reduction in injury rates over the 6-year period, with the greatest reduction between the 2007–2008 and 2008–2009 seasons. Multivariate predictors of time loss greater than 10 days were being a goalie (OR=1.68, 95% CI 1.18 to 2.38), being injured in a road game (OR=1.43, 95% CI 1.25 to 1.63) and the mechanism of injury being a body check (OR=2.21, 95% CI 1.86 to 2.62).
—Not every detail in there is useful, but it sure was easy to enumerate things at a glance. It shouldn’t take long to build a case that injuries are costly to player health and safety and to spectator enjoyment.
I didn’t read the papers to find out exactly what details they cover, but examining them would qualify as good research for your research paper.
Does that help?
—This is much better, but it doesn’t cite a source. Readers who care will want to follow a link to your reference for additional details. It’s your job to make that easy.
—Here’s the thing in a nutshell, HockeyFan. Your Ideal Reader is NOT a person with a casual, passing interest in hockey. Such a person won’t even start to read your essay, so you HAVE TO APPEAL to a person with more than a little background knowledge. Such a reader will not be satisfied with your description that “the NHL has added more penalties” or “whether the NHL is doing enough regulation.” They probably know a bit about the regulations already, and they’ll be expecting you to have the details AND to make specific recommendations for tougher rules and penalties if you have figured out what would be most beneficial.
—Again, this is extremely vague AND confusing as well. I can’t tell from your sentence whether the Olympics permit fighting. You say they “don’t regulate fighting on the ice,” which sure sounds as if they let it happen.
—You misplaced your ONLY. Your sentence says that the NHL ONLY ALLOWS fighting, which would mean they don’t notice it or care about it or discourage it or anything else but allow it.
—Simply saying that “it has been shown” that fights don’t attract fans will not persuade any critical reader. How in the world would anybody demonstrate that claim anyway?
It’s just too vague, I’m afraid, HockeyFan. What do you mean by “precautionary measures,” for example; is the full face mask the only “protective gear” you care about?; what’s the remedy that would reduce concussions? . . . . and other questions will surely occur to any reader who cares about your topic. You’ll need to gather some material to answer those questions . . . and the accumulation of information will make it much easier to write 1000 words without repeating yourself or wanting to waste sentences.
I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you need more help conducting research. I’d be happy to do some searching with you.
It’s 8:48. You owe me 45 minutes of Revision Time. We can spend some of it doing research together if you like.
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On APRIL 14, you posted ANOTHER Causal Rewrite. You shouldn’t have. You should have updated this one instead, to keep all the versions and feedback together. I copied the contents of that NEW Causal Rewrite into this post and Updated it.
Before I did that, I left you a Reply at the NEW Causal Rewrite, which I have since deleted.
Here’s what the Reply said:
This is really confusing for several reasons, HockeyFan.
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