Tue Jun 03, 2008 2:45 pm EDT
Do fans have a right to know specifics about player injuries?
Devils overlord Lou Lamoriello said every general manager at yesterday's meeting in Detroit was in support of limiting the flow of information to the media and fans about player injuries. The reason, he said, is safety of the players: Opponents know someone has a few broken ribs, and the next thing you know he's getting skewered by sticks like a kabob all game.
Not that League management needed some approval to stonewall the media on injuries. Tarik El-Bashir of the Washington Post deals with General Manager George McPhee and crew throughout the season, and they're a rather tight-lipped management group when it comes to injuries:
When a Capital goes down, we get "upper body injury", "undisclosed" or simply that he will not return to the game. Occasionally we are told what exactly is ailing the player, particularly if the injury was obvious to anyone watching. But other times we are told nothing at all and must track down the details from a source. That is, if anyone is willing to talk about it, which is rare because players and team officials aren't allowed to divulge their injuries to reporters per team rules.
In my experiences covering the Capitals, I've also found this to be the case, especially when it comes to potential concussions. That's where this deception on the part of some NHL teams gets rather dicey: How does one justify keeping head injuries quiet when some in the media believe the League is doing whatever it can to downplay a concussion epidemic?
Unlike in football, where injury information has a monetary value amongst gamblers, hockey's lack of injury disclosure has always involved a sense of player safety. But El-Bashir makes this salient point: Some players wouldn't mind injury info going public, because at least then fans would know why they're on a 0-for-20 goal-scoring skid.
He asks this question on his Capitals Insider blog, and I'll repeat it here: "As a hockey fan and a paying customer, do you feel NHL teams should be more forthcoming about injuries?"
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Greg Wyshynski
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11 Comments
1 - 11 of 11
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It still doesn't answer whether or not a paying customer deserves to know if a player's injured.
I have $200. I want to buy four great seats for a Caps home game, to see Ovechkin at his best. He plays like poop, and we're disappointed. Later, it comes out the team failed to disclose he had broken ribs. Don't the customers deserve to know about false goods?
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And I prefer the way DS phrased it - it was all-capsier.
Disclosing and hiding injuries is as much a part of strategy as line combos or just about anything else. You, as the paying customer, have the right to have the home team put forth its best effort to win the game, and if it's deemed that Alex Ovechkin with broken ribs gives them a better chance to do so than a healthy Tomas Fleischmann (fact, btw) and that that chance is increased by not letting the other team know that AO's got the injury, you've gotten your money's worth. If you can't accept that, don't buy the ticket - that's sports.
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Hello, Evgeni Malkin.
I think for the most part the players in a seven game series get to know each other really well (especially given the commonality of most matchups) and it's pretty tough to hide injuries from one another when they're playing every other night for almost two weeks. Might as well just disclose, I'd say.
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Good point bad example, scary Gary is one of the post seasons best player.
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Knowing injuries for players is not a right. What a tard.
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1 - 11 of 11