Hockey - A Tragic Tale of Head Injuries and a Sport in Denial

My name is Lawrence Land, I think this is a very revealing story into the professional rise and fall of Derek Booaard, the former Wild "enforcer" who died of a prescription drug overdose in his Minneapolis apartment last spring at the age of 28.

Written by John Branch http://www.minnpost.com Full article.

I just don’t see how any hockey fan could continue to cheer the sport's on-ice fights after reading Branch’s damning account of the devastating physical toll those sanctioned bare-fisted brawls take on the players.

And, please, don’t tell me that the enforcers are needed because they keep the other players from intentionally hurting each other. If the current rules don’t protect players from each other, then the sport should strengthen those rules with very heavy penalties — and have referees and other officials enforce them. (What a novel idea.)

Particularly upsetting is the fact that hockey players like Boogaard — ones who do not have the speed or the skills to be drafted onto a professional team for their goal-scoring abilities — are groomed from an early age to fight on the ice.

How can any parent, coach or sports official permit — indeed, encourage — a child (Boogaard began his life as a brawler in his mid teens) to become a hockey enforcer? And how can fans cheer them on?

For, as Branch makes painfully clear, those fights are not only crippling the players' bodies (causing many of them, like Boogaard, to turn to addictive painkillers), they are also destroying their brain cells