In light of Chris Pronger’s eye injury on Monday night, I decided to postpone what I was going to share with you today in favor of a look at eye injuries. While the injury report on Pronger is vague as always and I can’t speak with authority on his particular injury, I can say that there are far too many preventable eye injuries every year for the league and NHL Players’ Association to continue to ignore. Visors would help prevent many of these injuries and it’s time to address the need for eye protection in the NHL. For a league …
RICE & MICE: Gamekeeper’s Thumb
Gamekeeper’s thumb, sometimes called skier’s thumb, is a sprain of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) of the thumb. The bones that make up the palm of the hand are called metacarpals and the bones that comprise the fingers are called phalanges. The thumb has two phalanges, while the rest of the fingers have three phalanges. The joint that connects fingers to the palm are called the metacarpophalangeal (MCP) joints. The MCP of the thumb is flanked on either side by a collateral ligament, much like the knee. The UCL of the thumb is found on the inside portion of the …
RICE & MICE: On femur fractures and icing…
Certain injuries have the ability to spark a fierce debate in regards to rule changes, and it’s usually the severe or gruesome injuries that result in near immediate change. Even though some players had called seamless glass unsafe for years, the head and neck injuries suffered by Max Pacioretty last season was partially responsible for the prompt switch from seamless to non-seamless glass and to look at the padding around the glass in time for the 2011-12 NHL season. The recent focus on concussions and head injuries have resulted in another alteration of the rule book in regards to boarding …
RICE & MICE: To play or not to play?
Throughout the NHL season, there is always pressure for players to play with injury. Sure players can be called “tough” for battling through injury, but is it worth it? I’m not going to harp on players that play through injury and say how bad it is, but there are certain innate risks with pushing through injury. Injuries come with the territory of being an athlete. No matter how fit, no matter how skilled or mentally tough an athlete is, injuries will happen. The ultimate dilemma is never whether or not an injury will occur; the dilemma usually occurs on the …
Bring Back Gagne? A look at the pros and cons.
We have 25 days until free agency and I’m sure each and every one of those days will be rumor laden until July 1 arrives. Paul Holmgren was fairly active last season, adding Andrej Meszaros, Sean O’Donnell, Jody Shelley and Nikolay Zherdev, while retaining Darroll Powe and Daniel Carcillo. However all of that activity caused casualties of the cap. Arron Asham signed with Pittsburgh as a free agent and Simon Gagne, the longest- tenured Flyer at the time, waived his no-trade clause in a much maligned deal with Tampa Bay, while we took on Matt Walker — or more precisely, his two hip surgeries. …
RICE & MICE: Labrum tears…It’s all in the hips
Ok, so there’s a labrum in the shoulder, but I’m talking about hips so, for right now, it’s all in the hips. It seems that hip injuries are all the rage these days and not just in the NHL. Hip labrum injuries can also occur in golf, baseball, soccer and basketball as well as hockey. However, hip labrum tears are almost an epidemic in hockey over the past several years. Goaltenders are especially prone to labrum tears. This can be attributed in part to the butterfly style that most goalies use, however it’s not an injury that’s excusive to butterfly …
RICE & MICE: The sports hernia
Danny Briere has had a couple, Mike Richards has had at least one, Dan Carcillo had one last offseason and now, Kris Versteeg is the latest Flyer to undergo surgery to repair a sports hernia. A sports hernia is different from a traditional inguinal hernia that occurs when there is a significant area of the abdominal wall in the area of the inguinal canal that allows a pouch of herniated tissue to bulge through and cause pain. The inguinal canal is created by several abdominal muscles and ligaments and through the canal passes the spermatic cord and the ilioinguinal nerve …
RICE & MICE: Wrist cartilage tears (aka TFCC tears)
Flyers players Mike Richards and Andrej Meszaros both had wrist surgery on Wednesday morning. Both had cartilage tears. It’s reported that Meszaros had some ligament involvement with his surgery. It seems that there’s a lot of uncalled for speculation going on about Richards’ wrist procedure. When did he hurt it? How did it happen? Why didn’t he have surgery during the season? Even a sighting of Flyers (including Richards) at the Wednesday evening Philadelphia Union match, left the doors open for comments about his quick recovery from surgery. Seems to be everything just shy of questioning whether the injury is real. …
RICE & MICE: Orbital Fractures
Sometimes it seems that injuries have an ebb and flow to them and that certain injuries that are more common one year are not necessarily as common the next. One of the reoccurring themes on the IR lists of many teams this year seems to have been facial fractures. More severe than the run-of-the-mill broken nose, facial fractures can cause serious trouble. Some fractures of the orbit can pose a risk to normal eye function and require surgical repair and thus, a more lengthy recovery. The orbit isn’t a bone, rather it’s comprised of the seven bones that house the …
RICE & MICE: Coming back from concussion
The playoffs are starting this week. It’s the most exciting time of the year, in my opinion. Coaches are tested and players are pushed to play their limits. I normally hate to write about something that has held so much of the spotlight this season, but the question on so many peoples’ minds (especially the Tampa Bay Lightning) is: will Sidney Crosby finally be cleared for contact and make it back for a postseason run? Truth is, nobody can predict what will happen if he returns to play. That’s perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of concussions for players, …