July 2016 - SSE Wild Hockey

If you are looking for a boring article on simple hockey injury facts, then you are too late and this is the wrong article for you. There is one interesting hockey injury fact here that might interest you. This statistic comes from theglobeandmail.com. In an article titled The true cost of injuries to NHL players: $218-million each season, the author Roy Macgregor states: “The cost of concussions alone was an astonishing $128.5-million, or an average of $42.8-million a season.” Roy Macgregor is referring to a study that happened over the course of several NHL seasons describing money that was lost due to NHL players being injured. To clarify this even further, it means that players each have a salary that is equal to the value that the organization puts on their expected performance and abilities. When a player is not performing the organization is spending unnecessary money on that player. In Business Terms There is an easy way to make sense of this picture to the average joe. Think about your work place. When you work you get paid and when you do not work you generally do not get paid. While this may not be true all the time we are going to go with it. In a business, if your best employees are not out there helping the company and coming into work, then your company is not going to excel and meet expectations. Furthermore, this could hurt your profit margins. Gross margin is equivalent to your sales minus your cost of goods sold. If your cost of goods sold is super high, and your company is not selling much, then your profits will be hurt. This is the same general idea within a hockey organization. So why don’t professional hockey teams place more emphasis on injury prevention? Small Suggestion The suggestion I would give all professional hockey franchises is to spend a little bit more money in the right places. By this I mean to spend more money on injury prevention. If injuries could ultimately mean the downfall of profits and the success of the team, then why not spend a little bit extra? Or maybe even spend a lot. Sometimes in sports and companies you need to spend a little more money in order to get a better return on your investment. A company can spend as much money as they want on a player but if the training staff is not top notch then a lot of money is going down the drain, and with it the team’s success. Conclusion So if you are still reading this then you probably are wondering where in the world are my hockey injury facts. Well, you have one injury fact and it is a pretty interesting one at that. Just to think, organizations are losing millions of dollars to injuries every year. While injuries will always occur in professional sports there is one thing that can be done and that is injury prevention and rehab. Having the best training staff possible and investing time and energy into them will not only help the team save money but it will also help the team be successful. *References: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-true-cost-of-injuries-to-nhl-players-218-million-each-season/article16403001/