Did the lockout help prevent injuries?

by James Mirtle on Mar 20, 2009 12:20 AM CDT Comment 2 comments

I had a bit of a brainwave today looking back at my post on the man games lost totals of the past four years: I wondered what, if anything, the full-season totals for all 30 teams might tell us.

Here they be:

	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	2008-09 Proj.
Total	6,577	6,853	6,900	6,997
Avg	219	228	230	233

That's likely not a big enough swing — an increase of about 6 per cent — to draw many conclusions, but it'd be interesting if we had the full-season data over a longer term to draw from.

Given what we've got to go on, it would make sense that fewer players were injured coming off what was a much, much longer break than normal back in 2005-06.

The trend, while slight, doesn't look promising. Seven thousand games lost to injuries is an incredible figure for a league with about 750 players, and one would imagine the NHL is constantly looking for ways to keep that number down.

Without having another lockout, of course.

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It would be interesting to see those man-games-lost totals pre-lockout. We’d be better able to tell if the injuries are returning to their “normal” average (assuming a pre-lockout average exists) or if the post-lockout NHL is truly rougher.

The keyboard is mightier.

by breed16 on Mar 20, 2009 12:23 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Concussions

I bet concussions are a big factor in these totals. As the league takes concussions more seriously, players are being held out longer, increasing the totals. A count of total injuries, rather than man-games lost, might show if that trend exists.

by slusty on Mar 20, 2009 2:15 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs