Biomechanics In Ice Hockey

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I. INTRODUCTION Ice hockey is a sport played on ice, often within the confines of a rink. The sport is played with two teams on skates who use sticks to shoot a puck at a net to score, only occurring when the puck gets past the goaltender. The game is played with usually five skaters on the ice, plus the goaltender. Three of these players are usually forwards, while two are defenders. This game moves at a fast pace where players are on the ice for usually 45 seconds at a time before a line change occurs, where the players on the ice come off and a new set of players go on [1]. The offensive line is on the ice to get the puck to the other team’s zone and shoot on the goaltender. The defensive line is on the ice to protect the goaltender and …show more content…

Biomechanics allows the study of ice hockey to occur. In terms of ice hockey, biomechanics can be used to study a players shot, a goaltenders movement, line changes where players jump over the boards to get on and off the ice, and impacts. Multiple options are available in regards to recording biomechanical values during ice hockey play. These options often include instruments with the player’s helmet, which do not disrupt the player’s movement. Other options being used are accelerometers attached to the players extremities. Currently studies in ice hockey are looking at head impacts and the injuries connected to those impacts. These impacts are often categorized between event type, impact location, and impact object. These categories are helpful in determining what happened to cause the impact, once the impact is determined biomechanics is used to determine liner and rotational accelerations. The values that are calculated for the linear and rotational accelerations can be used to determine if head injury is likely for similar events or if a head injury occurred during the event …show more content…

This study was completed using 52 Bantam and Midget hockey players, 13-14 years of age and 15-16 years of age respectively [5]. Players were required to were instrumented helmets for the duration of two seasons where data was captured for 12,253 head impacts. The system used to instrument the helmets was the HIT system, which uses an on-board algorithm to create the Head Impact Technology severity profile (HITsp) [5]. Data was collected for acceleration values, player position, event type, and head impact location. Six-single axis accelerometers, a battery pack, and the telemetry instrumentation was attached to either a Reebok RBK 6K, 8K, or Easton Stealth S9 hockey helmet which was checked for proper fit biweekly. All data was time stamped, encoded, stored locally, and transmitted wirelessly to a sideline

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