Why NHL teams are so vague with injury information

Rod Brind’Amour labored to find the right words to describe injured goalie Petr Mrazek on Tuesday.

“He’s... you know, again ... that’s ... huh ...,” the first-year Carolina Hurricanes coach said when asked about Mrazek’s status going forward in the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Hurricanes, with a 2-0 series lead, host the New York Islanders on Wednesday in Game 3. Mrazek, who started the first nine playoff games, will not play because of a “lower-body” injury.

Brind’Amour would prefer to speak freely about injuries but he’s slowly learned how to edit himself in real-time during a press conferences like the one after practice on Tuesday at PNC Arena.

Unlike the NFL, the NHL doesn’t require teams to issue an injury report. So injury information from NHL personnel is intentionally vague. “Upper-body” or “lower-body” is about as specific as a team is willing to get without a league mandate.

For Brind’Amour, who is normally quick to the cut, it has been an adjustment in his first year as a head coach.

“I don’t like the trend where I’m heading,” Brind’Amour said of his new-found ability to talk around injuries.

It’s an occupational hazard. Most hockey coaches would rather not talk about injuries or provide any specific information beyond the general vicinity.

Brind’Amour, who played 20 seasons in the NHL, is not like most coaches. His plan before the season started, he said, was “to tell all the injuries.”

“I don’t get it but I guess you have to be somewhat careful,” Brind’Amour said. “Everyone is doing it. I’m new to this so I don’t want to be the one guy who starts telling everything and then gets screamed at for doing it.”

Former Vancouver coach Pat Quinn is generally credited with starting the upper/lower body trend in the 1990s. The New Jersey Devils, under former general manager Lou Lamoriello, now the Islanders GM, turned it into the league standard in the 2000s.

The Canes were late adopters, during the 2006 Stanley Cup season they still listed specific injuries, but eventually conformed.

There are still exceptions for the Canes. They listed forward Andrei Svechnikov in the concussion protocol after he suffered a head injury in with Washington Alex Ovechkin in the first round. In March, they disclosed that defenseman Calvin de Haan had an eye injury.

The premise of protecting injury information falls under the wide umbrella of player safety. If the opponent knows the specific injury, a wrist or ankle for example, they could target the injury.

“In the old days the reason you didn’t tell injuries is because guys would go after you,” Brind’Amour said.

Given the intensity of playoff hockey, that would require some nimble adjustments. Not impossible but also not necessarily realistic, Canes forward Jordan Staal said.

“It would be hard to think about a specific injury and react that quickly on the ice,” Staal said.

Staal then tried to work through the logic. Maybe a rib injury, Staal said, would be easy to target.

“Maybe you’d try to hit them more?” Staal said if he knew a player had a rib injury. “But you’re always trying to hit guys anyway. I don’t know.”

Even with the Stanley Cup at stake, de Haan said, he didn’t think players would intentionally try to hurt each other.

“I don’t think hockey is that type of game but you never know,” de Haan said. “You don’t want to hurt anyone out there. At least I don’t think anyone is really trying to hurt anybody.”

Brind’Amour mocked the notion that an opponent would target a body part if they had more specific injury information.

“So what are they going to do slash your hand or your foot because you’re hurt?” Brind’Amour said. “Now they’ll take a penalty. It’s different. Times have changed. So I don’t really get it.”

Unfortunately for Brind’Amour, he has had a lot of practice during the playoffs in talking around injuries. The Canes were missing forwards Micheal Ferland (upper body), Jordan Martinook (lower body) and Svechnikov before Saturday’s Game 2 win in New York.

During the 2-1 win, the Canes lost defenseman Trevor van Riemsdyk (upper body), forward Saku Maenalanen (hand) and Mrazek. Brind’Amour was hopeful some combination of Svechnikov, Ferland and Martinook could play during the next two games in Raleigh.

Mrazek is day-to-day, Brind’Amour said, and should be a “short-term thing.”

“The report I got is it’s not as bad as we feared,” Brind’Amour said of Mrazek. “It’s a nagging thing. I don’t know how long it’s going to go but it shouldn’t be too long, is what I’ve been told.”

Under different circumstances, Brind’Amour would say more about it. With legalized sports gambling becoming more prevalent, and already legal in three U.S. cities with NHL teams, that could change in the future.

The league partnered with MGM Resorts International in October to share proprietary data. That move opens the door for real-time, in-game betting in the near future.

It’s likely a sign that sharing more information and designating the game-to-game status of players (probable, questionable, out) is probably not far behind.

“Maybe we’ll get to a point where they’ve got tell you or make you tell,” Brind’Amour said.

Until then for most coaches, the more vague, the better.

This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 8:10 AM.