Max
05-17-2002, 06:22 PM
Painful reality for NHL players
IT TAKES A LOT OF HURT TO BRING THEM TO HALT
By Mark Emmons
Mercury News
A decade ago, when Teemu Selanne was a 22-year-old rookie with the Winnipeg Jets, the trainer pulled him aside and offered the kid from Finland some advice.
The most important thing to learn about the NHL, Selanne was told, is that you have to play with pain.
Sometimes horrible pain.
That message sank in, as it has with everyone playing in the Sharks-Avalanche series, which is tied entering Game 5 on Saturday. Then again, technically speaking, Selanne couldn't feel his fractured thumb last spring because of the six to nine painkilling shots he got before and during each Sharks playoff game.
But, Selanne added, ``You have to at least try.''
He wasn't being heroic; he is merely your typical hockey player.
There's a price to be paid in hockey, and the currency is pain.
Athletes of every sport strain muscles, break bones and tear ligaments. But what makes hockey players unusual, as a masochistic group, is that they're more willing to play with the sort of injuries that would send mere mortals to the emergency room.
For 60 minutes, players knock the living daylights out of one another, exchanging vicious checks and whacks with sticks. Yet when someone leaves the ice bleeding after a devastating hit, he just gets stitched up and returns a few minutes later as if it's no big deal.
They grit their teeth -- at least what teeth they have remaining -- and endure injuries with an often remarkable tolerance for pain.
``I tell players that the difference between being hurt and injured is that you can play hurt, but you can't play injured,'' said old-school Sharks Coach Darryl Sutter.
Translation: If you're physically able to lace up your skates, you should attempt to play. And even if you can't, you still play. Pittsburgh Penguins star Mario Lemieux is renown for suiting up in the playoffs even when his sore back wouldn't let him bend over to put on his skates.
So, Darryl, are hockey players the toughest athletes in pro sports?
For a moment, Sutter has a look on his face suggesting he can't believe that even requires an answer.
``No question they're tougher,'' he finally said.
Different threshold
When he was a player with the Chicago Blackhawks, Sutter was friends with several Cubs. Occasionally they would visit the Blackhawks' dressing room.
``They couldn't believe what we played with,'' he said. ``They'd laugh about how if they had stitches or a blister, they didn't have to play. But hockey is a different sport.''
Sports Illustrated once put it this way: The only medical procedure some players fear is an autopsy.
They certainly get along fine without some organs. For instance, hockey players don't need spleens.
Colorado star forward Peter Forsberg proved that, returning from surgery last spring to remove his spleen (and also operations on both ankles and a foot).
Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy, then with Montreal, walked out of a hospital during the 1994 playoffs after an appendicitis attack to resume playing. He had the appendix taken out after the playoffs.
But hockey players are, well, numb to the idea that playing through pain is anything special and prefer to say as little as possible about their suffering. Take Colorado defenseman Rob Blake, who missed this series opener because of what was described vaguely as a ``leg injury'' before bouncing back with five goals in the next three games.
``This is just the way we've always done it,'' Blake said. ``If you're healthy enough to play, you just go through whatever it is to get on the ice. It's just inherent in the sport.''
Trend started early
Players always have been as hard as the ice they play on.
In the game's early days, Boston defenseman Eddie Shore -- a scrapper reputed to have left hockey without any teeth and with 978 stitches -- was in a hockey fight where one of his ears was almost completely torn off. He found a doctor to reattach it, but first demanded a mirror so he could watch and make sure it was done right.
But the NHL's patron saint of pain is Bobby Baun. While playing for Toronto in the 1964 Stanley Cup finals, Baun scored the winning goal of Game 6 in overtime after suffering a broken tibia in the third period. Then, after icing his leg for two days, he played in Game 7 as the Maple Leafs beat Detroit.
``He wouldn't go to the hospital,'' said Pete Stemkowski, a 15-year NHL veteran who later was a teammate of Baun and now is a Sharks radio broadcaster. ``He said, `I knew it was broken, but if I go they'll tell me it's broken and then I can't play.' So he didn't go.''
Today, with millions of dollars invested in players and state-of-the-art medical care, an athlete couldn't get away with that stunt. But the '60s was still the Dark Ages for sports medicine.
``When I played for the Rangers, we had a trainer who also was an usher at Madison Square Garden,'' Stemkowski said. ``He didn't know how to take out stitches, so we took them out on our own.''
Stemkowski began his career during the ``Original Six'' era when there were only about 120 jobs available. You played hurt for fear of losing your livelihood. So Stemkowski went on the ice with a broken toe and a clot that dripped blood into his spinal cord. He shrugs it off as just a part of hockey.
``How can you say, `Well, I've got a bruised knuckle and I can't play' and still look your teammates in the eye?'' he asked.
The only thing more painful than assorted aches, lacerations and fractures is letting down the rest of the team.
Know the code
After a recent Sharks practice, Todd Harvey and Mike Ricci were contemplating when they figured out hockey's ya-gotta-play-hurt code.
``You learn on the pond when you get hit by a frozen puck in the shin, right Reech?'' Harvey said.
Ricci nodded in agreement.
``When you're growing up, you only have a certain amount of time to play between when you come home from school and when it gets dark and your parents call you in for dinner,'' he said. ``So if you get a little banged up, you have to suck it up and play because it's too cold to sit there and watch everybody else play. Maybe that's where it started.''
It's a theory shared by Mark Sontag, a rehabilitation physician who acts as a spinal and pain management consultant with the Sharks, Giants, Raiders and SaberCats. Not only does Sontag believe hockey players have a higher pain threshold than other athletes, he also thinks that tolerance is developed at an early age -- when they're learning to play with friends and siblings.
``When they fall down and scrape their knee, the older kids aren't going to skate over, pick them up, coddle them and run them home to Mommy,'' Sontag said. ``They pick them up by the scruff of their neck and start them skating again. So they're conditioning their nervous system to dampen pain.''
Yet ask most hockey players if their sport breeds a toughness not found in the other pro leagues and you're likely to get shrugged shoulders.
``If you went into a football or basketball locker room, they might give you an argument,'' Sharks forward Scott Thornton said. ``Football has always been the sport recognized as a tough, physical game where everybody plays injured. I guess hockey players don't think too much about injuries.''
Then Thornton reached over and knocked on the wood in his locker stall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mercury News Staff Writer David Pollak contributed to this report. Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@sjmercury.com or (408)-920-5745.
IT TAKES A LOT OF HURT TO BRING THEM TO HALT
By Mark Emmons
Mercury News
A decade ago, when Teemu Selanne was a 22-year-old rookie with the Winnipeg Jets, the trainer pulled him aside and offered the kid from Finland some advice.
The most important thing to learn about the NHL, Selanne was told, is that you have to play with pain.
Sometimes horrible pain.
That message sank in, as it has with everyone playing in the Sharks-Avalanche series, which is tied entering Game 5 on Saturday. Then again, technically speaking, Selanne couldn't feel his fractured thumb last spring because of the six to nine painkilling shots he got before and during each Sharks playoff game.
But, Selanne added, ``You have to at least try.''
He wasn't being heroic; he is merely your typical hockey player.
There's a price to be paid in hockey, and the currency is pain.
Athletes of every sport strain muscles, break bones and tear ligaments. But what makes hockey players unusual, as a masochistic group, is that they're more willing to play with the sort of injuries that would send mere mortals to the emergency room.
For 60 minutes, players knock the living daylights out of one another, exchanging vicious checks and whacks with sticks. Yet when someone leaves the ice bleeding after a devastating hit, he just gets stitched up and returns a few minutes later as if it's no big deal.
They grit their teeth -- at least what teeth they have remaining -- and endure injuries with an often remarkable tolerance for pain.
``I tell players that the difference between being hurt and injured is that you can play hurt, but you can't play injured,'' said old-school Sharks Coach Darryl Sutter.
Translation: If you're physically able to lace up your skates, you should attempt to play. And even if you can't, you still play. Pittsburgh Penguins star Mario Lemieux is renown for suiting up in the playoffs even when his sore back wouldn't let him bend over to put on his skates.
So, Darryl, are hockey players the toughest athletes in pro sports?
For a moment, Sutter has a look on his face suggesting he can't believe that even requires an answer.
``No question they're tougher,'' he finally said.
Different threshold
When he was a player with the Chicago Blackhawks, Sutter was friends with several Cubs. Occasionally they would visit the Blackhawks' dressing room.
``They couldn't believe what we played with,'' he said. ``They'd laugh about how if they had stitches or a blister, they didn't have to play. But hockey is a different sport.''
Sports Illustrated once put it this way: The only medical procedure some players fear is an autopsy.
They certainly get along fine without some organs. For instance, hockey players don't need spleens.
Colorado star forward Peter Forsberg proved that, returning from surgery last spring to remove his spleen (and also operations on both ankles and a foot).
Avalanche goalie Patrick Roy, then with Montreal, walked out of a hospital during the 1994 playoffs after an appendicitis attack to resume playing. He had the appendix taken out after the playoffs.
But hockey players are, well, numb to the idea that playing through pain is anything special and prefer to say as little as possible about their suffering. Take Colorado defenseman Rob Blake, who missed this series opener because of what was described vaguely as a ``leg injury'' before bouncing back with five goals in the next three games.
``This is just the way we've always done it,'' Blake said. ``If you're healthy enough to play, you just go through whatever it is to get on the ice. It's just inherent in the sport.''
Trend started early
Players always have been as hard as the ice they play on.
In the game's early days, Boston defenseman Eddie Shore -- a scrapper reputed to have left hockey without any teeth and with 978 stitches -- was in a hockey fight where one of his ears was almost completely torn off. He found a doctor to reattach it, but first demanded a mirror so he could watch and make sure it was done right.
But the NHL's patron saint of pain is Bobby Baun. While playing for Toronto in the 1964 Stanley Cup finals, Baun scored the winning goal of Game 6 in overtime after suffering a broken tibia in the third period. Then, after icing his leg for two days, he played in Game 7 as the Maple Leafs beat Detroit.
``He wouldn't go to the hospital,'' said Pete Stemkowski, a 15-year NHL veteran who later was a teammate of Baun and now is a Sharks radio broadcaster. ``He said, `I knew it was broken, but if I go they'll tell me it's broken and then I can't play.' So he didn't go.''
Today, with millions of dollars invested in players and state-of-the-art medical care, an athlete couldn't get away with that stunt. But the '60s was still the Dark Ages for sports medicine.
``When I played for the Rangers, we had a trainer who also was an usher at Madison Square Garden,'' Stemkowski said. ``He didn't know how to take out stitches, so we took them out on our own.''
Stemkowski began his career during the ``Original Six'' era when there were only about 120 jobs available. You played hurt for fear of losing your livelihood. So Stemkowski went on the ice with a broken toe and a clot that dripped blood into his spinal cord. He shrugs it off as just a part of hockey.
``How can you say, `Well, I've got a bruised knuckle and I can't play' and still look your teammates in the eye?'' he asked.
The only thing more painful than assorted aches, lacerations and fractures is letting down the rest of the team.
Know the code
After a recent Sharks practice, Todd Harvey and Mike Ricci were contemplating when they figured out hockey's ya-gotta-play-hurt code.
``You learn on the pond when you get hit by a frozen puck in the shin, right Reech?'' Harvey said.
Ricci nodded in agreement.
``When you're growing up, you only have a certain amount of time to play between when you come home from school and when it gets dark and your parents call you in for dinner,'' he said. ``So if you get a little banged up, you have to suck it up and play because it's too cold to sit there and watch everybody else play. Maybe that's where it started.''
It's a theory shared by Mark Sontag, a rehabilitation physician who acts as a spinal and pain management consultant with the Sharks, Giants, Raiders and SaberCats. Not only does Sontag believe hockey players have a higher pain threshold than other athletes, he also thinks that tolerance is developed at an early age -- when they're learning to play with friends and siblings.
``When they fall down and scrape their knee, the older kids aren't going to skate over, pick them up, coddle them and run them home to Mommy,'' Sontag said. ``They pick them up by the scruff of their neck and start them skating again. So they're conditioning their nervous system to dampen pain.''
Yet ask most hockey players if their sport breeds a toughness not found in the other pro leagues and you're likely to get shrugged shoulders.
``If you went into a football or basketball locker room, they might give you an argument,'' Sharks forward Scott Thornton said. ``Football has always been the sport recognized as a tough, physical game where everybody plays injured. I guess hockey players don't think too much about injuries.''
Then Thornton reached over and knocked on the wood in his locker stall.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mercury News Staff Writer David Pollak contributed to this report. Contact Mark Emmons at memmons@sjmercury.com or (408)-920-5745.