Category: Hockey Injuries

Anger can be a good tool in the sports toolbox. Players can use anger to forge through a difficult time, gather up more energy or power to the end of a game. Anger becomes a problem when the negative effects outweigh the positive ones.

Some negative effects of anger:

• Causing injury to yourself or opponent.
• Decreasing performance output.
• Reflecting poorly on you and/or your teammates.
• Losing a game or match.

Congratulations, Ben Eager, you’ve manager to hit all the negative effects of anger in your conference finals game 2 performance against the Vancouver Canucks.

Ben’s performance sets the standards for anger meltdowns in a team sport. I wish there was an award, but you’ll have to settle for the, well, display in the penalty box.

The St. Louis Blues are to hockey what the Cincinnati Bengals are to football. They have had some good, solid years, but they can never seem to put it together. This year is no different, they have lost 7 in a row and can’t seem to catch a break. Well, Andy McDonald can. He broke his ankle in a game against the Montreal Canadians. He went into the boards and came out with a broken ankle. No luck for the Blues or Andy McDonald.

Broken ankles aren’t anything to mess with. We’ve discussed how to treat a broken ankle in the past, but I wanted to take the time to add some more information about it, specifically how hockey players are at an increased risk of ankle injuries.

Erik Johnson is a young defenseman for the St. Louis Blues, but more importantly, he’s the face of the franchise. He’s the one everyone points to when people start talking about the Blues becoming a good NHL team again. It’s too bad Erik Johnson is now out for the season due to torn ligaments in his knee. The funny thing about this injury is that is supposedly happened when Erik Johnson caught his foot between the accelerator and brake pedals in a golf cart.

Uh, huh.

Typically, if you see injuries to star players in odd circumstances, something else happened. While we don’t know what the exact situation was we can look at the answer given so far. The best comes from John Davidson, the St. Louis Blues president:

Buffalo Sabres rookie goalie Ryan Miller had a good thing going. He was the starting goalie of an NHL team, he was doing well and his team was great on the ice. A shot the missed his blocker and hit his thumb has put the brakes on it. Ryan Miller ended up with a broken thumb joining the millions of other people who break their thumbs. Heck, even Justin Timberlake, who is modeling the cast, has broken his thumb.

What is a broken thumb? In technical terms you’re breaking either your distal phalange or proximal phalange. The distal phalange is the bone that goes from your finger tip to your knuckle, and the proximal phalange goes from the knuckle to your hand. Well, it attaches to your first metacarpal.

Reported first on the Sports Cartel network site Back in Blue, St. Louis Blues left wing Keith Tkachuk will be sidelined indefinitely with three fractured ribs.

What is a fractured rib?

A rib fracture is a crack or break in one of the bones of the rib cage.  The most common cause of a fractured rib is a direct blow to chest – and in Tkachuk’s case, it occurred when the blade of his hockey stick got stuck in the pads of a goaltender, jamming the butt-end of the stick into his chest.

Ribs can also be fractured with forceful coughing, most commonly occurring in people with a disease like osteoporosis or when cancer has weakened the bones.

What  happens when a rib is fractured?

Gilbert Brule of the Columbus Blue Jackets has a broken sternum. Can you say ouch? I know you could.

For those who slept through biology or anatomy class, your sternum is the bone that holds the rib cage together. It’s the framework for protecting your lungs. By breaking or fracturing your sternum, you are putting your lungs at risk.

Why is a sternum injury so painful? The sternum helps with your breathing, so each breath causes more pain. This is especially true when breathing is labored or deep.

How do broken sternums happen? Blunt force trauma is always the cause. In this case, Brule was checked in the chest. The compression caused the sternum to break. Almost all sternum injuries end up with pieces of the sternum fractured. It’s not a clean break. In most cases you’re going to need surgery to pin the pieces together.

A fractured orbital bone, a result of a puck to the face of Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mats Sundin, may have the Toronto captain sidelined for at least four to six weeks — and possibly more if surgery is required.

“I can go back to when I was on the ice when Bryan Berard‘s eye injury happened to him – it’s certainly something you don’t want anyone to go through,” said Sundin.

Sundin was taken to a local hospital and later released.

“The eyeball itself is fine,” Leafs coach Pat Quinn said.  “There’s damage to the surrounding areas, but they weren’t able to report if there is serious damage.”

Sundin’s eye injury has re-kindled the NHL visor debate.