Effect of Penalty Minute Rule Change on Injuries and Game Disqualification Penalties in High School Ice Hockey

Abstract

Background:

Recent efforts have focused on eliminating dangerous hits in ice hockey. Fair play rule changes have successfully reduced injury risk but have not been widely implemented.

Purpose:

To determine the effect of a penalty infraction minutes (PIM) rule change in high school boys’ ice hockey on injuries and game disqualification penalties.

Study Design:

Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods:

Injury data were collected from 2 Rhode Island hospital systems and game/penalty data through the Rhode Island Hockey Coaches Association website. Participants included high school boys’ hockey varsity players aged 13 to 19 years presenting to 5 emergency departments for hockey injuries during 6 seasons (December 2012–April 2018). Rule change for the 2015-2016 season implemented varying suspensions for players accumulating ≥50 PIM and ≥70 PIM during regular season and playoffs. Injuries were classified as body checking or non–body checking related, and injury rates pre– versus post–rule change were compared via the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel chi-square test with the odds ratio (OR) to measure risk reduction.

Results:

During the study period, 1762 boys’ high school varsity hockey games were played. Of 134 game-related injuries, 82 (61.2%) were attributable to body checking. The PIM rule change was associated with a significant reduction in all injuries (OR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.35-0.86; P = .008), concussion/closed head injury (OR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.23-0.85; P = .012), and combined subgroups of concussion/closed head injury and upper body injury (OR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.31-0.80; P = .003). Game disqualification penalties per season were not significantly reduced following the rule change, occurring in 5.2% of games before the rule change and 4.4% of games after (OR, 0.84; 95% CI, 0.54-1.31; P = .440).

Conclusion:

Implementation of a statewide PIM restriction rule change effectively reduced the mean number of game-related injuries per season among high school boys’ hockey varsity players.

Keywords

ice hockey rule change fair play body checking injury prevention

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allen

. Hockey without rough stuff: how junior leagues have decreased fighting. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/hockey/2016/04/05/ushl-nahl-fighting-penalties-violence-hockey-nhl/82659778/. Published April 5, 2016. Accessed May 5, 2018.

American Medical Society for Sports Medicine. Stricter checking and boarding rules led to dramatic reduction of high school ice hockey injuries [press release]. https://www.amssm.org/stricter-checking-and-boa-p-223.html?StartPos=&Type=. Published April 26, 2018. Accessed May 12, 2018.

Blythe

. Approximate binomial confidence limits. J Am Statist Assn. 1986;81:843-855.

Institute of Medicine, National Research Council. Sports-Related Concussions in Youth: Improving the Science, Changing the Culture. Washington, DC: National Academies Press; 2014.

King

. Are the kids alright? Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal. https://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2015/08/10/In-Depth/Lead.aspx. Published August 10, 2015. Accessed May 4, 2018.

Mishra

. Safety rule changes needed to grow youth sports. http://www.sidelinesportsdoc.com/safety-rules-changes-needed-to-grow-youth-sports/. Published November 24, 2015. Accessed May 4, 2018.

Muir

. AHL announces crackdown on fighting. https://www.si.com/nhl/2016/07/07/AHL-fighting-crackdown-new-rules. Published July 7, 2016. Accessed May 5, 2018.

National Federation of State High School Associations. Participation statistics. http://www.nfhs.org/ParticipationStatistics/PDF/2016-17_Participation_Survey_Results.pdf. Accessed May 4, 2018.

National Federation of State High School Associations. Penalties for boarding, checking from behind increase in high school ice hockey. https://www.nfhs.org/articles/penalties-for-boarding-checking-from-behind-increase-in-high-school-ice-hockey/. Published July 16, 2014. Accessed May 5, 2018.

10.

Pond

. Changing the dangerous play culture. https://www.usahockey.com/news_article/show/898148. Published March 15, 2018. Accessed May 5, 2018.

11.

Rhode Island Athletic Trainers’ Association. Senate bill S 0305 and S0023. https://riat3a.wildapricot.org/. Published March 1, 2017. Accessed May 12, 2018.

12.

Roberts

Brust

Leonard

et al . Fair play rules and injury reduction in ice hockey. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1996;150(2):140-145.

13.

Smith

Gaz

Larson

et al . Does fair play reduce concussions? A prospective, comparative analysis of competitive youth hockey tournaments. BMJ Open Sport Exerc Med. 2016;2(1):e000074.

14.

Smith

Stuart

Dodick

et al . Ice Hockey Summit II: zero tolerance for head hits and fighting. Clin J Sport Med. 2015;25(2):78-87.

15.

Smith

Stuart

Greenwald

et al . Proceeding from the ice hockey summit on concussion: a call to action. Clin J Sport Med. 2011;21:281-287.

16.

Yard

Comstock

. Injuries sustained by pediatric ice hockey, lacrosse, and field hockey athletes presenting to United States emergency departments, 1990-2003. J Athl Train. 2006;41(4):441-449.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB