Face Masks In Hockey Essay

Introduction

In modern day society hockey is a violent and aggressive sport with many fights and injuries, that leave aftermaths of trauma for many years that follow. Hockey is a sport that is played from many age groups and cultures, allowing itself to impact individuals from one place to another through their lifetimes. Hockey is an aggressive sport occupied with fighting, strategy, and luck that allows one team to appear victorious over the other. The fist-fight is formulated as a social ritual involving respect and honor among players to explain this fact, qualities which are absent in other types of assaults (Colburn, 155).

With hockey being filled with aggression and fighting, injuries are become more common and accepted through the many age groups that play. Concussions, lacerations, and even pulled muscles

One of these fundamental research discoveries was produced out of the curiosity of learning how facial lacerations correlate to the expected fighting injuries hockey players experience. The American Journal of Sports Medicine conducted an experimental observation on the advantages of using face masks within the sport, and what the face mask’s protection means for the average injuries recorded within the four -year period that the research was conducted (LaPrade 773). Within this research, recordings were directed both for practices and games, taking note of injuries to the face while wearing the mandatory mask and the number of injuries when players neglected to wear their face masks. The initial data found for the study when face masks were not mandatory provided expected results, showing sixteen facial lacerations within a fifteen game period. This concluded data to show that out of a 1000- player game hour count, fifteen injuries occurred (LaPrade 774). This boiled down to similar data recorded from previous studies when facial masks were not