Is Playing in the NHL Hazardous to Your Health?
An alarming study on fighting in hockey deserves more exploration.
It was impossible to miss this piece of hockey news last Thursday.
A study of former National Hockey League players shows that enforcers who spent a lot of time dropping their gloves or in the penalty box lived significantly shorter lives than their peers.
Researchers at Columbia University in New York reached the conclusion after analyzing data from 6,039 NHL players from 1967 to last spring.
The study, published Wednesday in the JAMA Network Open, found that enforcers died on average a decade younger than comparable peers who were drafted at the same rank, were of similar height and weight and played the same position.
Based on their findings, the researchers called on the NHL to ban fighting.
When I saw the news, I hesitated to write about it, wanting to take the time to ponder the findings. Let’s start with how the study (PDF download), which was published by JAMA Network Open, was designed. The researchers compiled the regular season statistics of every individual who played in the NHL between October 1967 and April 2022 (6,309 players). From that pool, they defined two groups: enforcer-fighters who compiled 50 or more career fighting majors (331 players); and enforcer-penalties who averaged three or more penalty minutes per game (183 players).
The researchers then constructed two respective control groups of equal size: control-fighter (331 players); and control-penalties (183 players), respectively. And it was in the construction of the control groups that the researchers displayed admirable attention to detail. Using a piece of software called MATLAB, players were placed into the respective control groups by matching the enforcer groups based on date of birth, total number of games played, height, weight and position. With that in place, the researchers used public sourced information to confirm cause of death.
The identities of all the players included in the study groups were anonymized.
If you want a finer level of detail on the number crunching, I’ll direct you to 4th paragraph on page 3 of the study. And when the numbers came out (emphasis mine) …
Among the 6039 NHL players identified (mean [SD] age, 47.1 [15.2] years), the mean (SD) number of fights was 9.7 (24.5). The mortality rates of E-F and C-F players (13 [3.9%] vs 14 [4.2%], respectively; P = .84) or E-P and C-P players (13 [7.1.%] vs 10 [5.5%]; P = .34) were not significantly different. The mean (SD) age at death was 10 years younger for E-F players (47.5 [13.8] years) and E-P players (45.2 [10.5] years) compared with C-F players (57.5 [7.1] years) and C-P players (55.2 [8.4] years). There was a difference in causes of death between the control and enforcer players (2 neurodegenerative disorders, 2 drug overdoses, 3 suicides, and 4 vehicular crashes among enforcers vs 1 motor vehicle crash among controls; P = .03), with enforcers dying at higher rates of overdose (2 of 21 [9.5%] vs 0 of 24) and suicide (3 of 21 [14.3%] vs 0 of 24) (P = .02).
When you review the headlines, all of them focus on the finding that enforcers as defined by this study died about ten years earlier than the players in the control group in addition to the tragic circumstances of their deaths. That’s disturbing enough. But what got buried is that the mean age at death for members of the respective control groups was just 57.5 years (control-fighters) and 55.2 years (control-penalties).
The Centers for Disease Control reports male life expectancy in the USA is 73.5 years.
To the credit of Pierre St-Arnaud of The Canadian Press, he pushed on these data points. While he didn’t interview the authors of the study — it doesn’t seem like they were made available to anyone for interviews — he did interview Dr. Dave Ellemberg of the University of Montreal, a full professor in their school of medicine.
The new study raises a major question to which the researchers did not have an answer. While fighters and those who drew a lot of penalty minutes died 10 years younger on average than their peers, those other teammates also died surprisingly young.
Ellemberg said he was shaken to see that athletes in the control groups died on average in their mid-50s. "That's extremely young," he said, adding that the question merits further research.
I’d certainly say so. Let’s hope we see it happen.
Eric McErlain blogged at Off Wing Opinion regularly from 2002-2009. His work has also appeared at The Sporting News, AOL FanHouse, NBC Sports.com, Deadspin, The Hockey Writers, Pro Football Weekly and The Washington Post. In 1993, he wrote one of the first columns in a daily newspaper covering fantasy football for The Washington Times.
I had more questions after reading this:
- The average life expectancy in the US may be 73 years but how many players in the study were American?
- Did the study take into account any players who died (from both the study and control groups) in car accidents or by suicide?
Often players have a tough time leaving the limelight and accepting a more normal lifestyle. This could lead to risky behavior, depression or suicide.
I’m actually not surprised, but I’ve become pretty sensitive to the brutality of professional sports - especially football and hockey. No way the human body was designed to withstand that kind of punishment for extended periods of time. The neurological issues alone must outweigh any conditioning benefits long term. Even today, watch how often a player is clearly concussed but allowed to keep playing - not to mention all the smaller hits that build up over time. Not a recipe for a long life.