13-yr-old girl dies after being hit in the head by hockey puck.
http://espn.go.com/nhl/news/2002/0319/1354060.html
I’m thinking this is a problem. Stinking stupid sport, anyway.
I’m sorry for the loss of that little girl. 
According to that same article though, more deaths have happened to baseball fans than hockey fans. Should we also ban baseball? And far more people have died at car races, yet no one would consider banning them!
Btw, hockey is not a stinking stupid sport. 
As the article indicates, it is a “problem” and always has been. This is an unfortunate thing. Worse than that, it’s a tragedy. However, your immediate knee-jerk reaction is a bit much, I think. I DO, however, believe that mesh should be placed around the top of the rink to prevent this, though. When attending a hockey game you will hear many warnings to keep your attention on the game. It is good advice. I think there will be changes after this, and they will be soon in coming…
Novus Opiate
(Hockey player and watcher for many years)
This could happen in baseball or golf. People have died playing football and alot have bitten it in NASCAR. The danger is part of the attraction. While this is a tragedy and my heart goes out to the poor girls family, I don’t want my right to take the risk deprived. It says on the back of the tickets that it is dangerous. Walking out of your house can be dangerous. Millions of people see hockey games every day without getting killed. Freak accident & a tragedy - but it doesn’ warrant banning hockey.
DaLovin’ Dj
I like Novus Opiate’s solution: just put some netting up. It would be cheap and the holes could be big enough that it would be very unobtrusive.
You just have to make sure that it still allows the puck to go over the glass and stay out of play. A straight rink-top to ceiling net would really screw up the flow of the sport
;j
Novus
I’ve been waiting for this thread to pop up all day.
It took much longer than I thought it would.
Yep, you must be from mars.
This is the FIRST death of a spectator (caused by the game) in the history of the NHL. Ever. There has been some minor league and junior hockey deaths. But this is the first one ever in the NHL. Considering the number of fans that have attended a game in the history of the sport, well, you should get the picture.
There is absolutely no justification for “Stinking stupid sport, anyway”. I cannot say more than this in this forum.
Every single activity in life has some risk. It is terribly unfortunate what happened to this girl. However, it is unbelievably arrogant to believe that the opinion of someone who has nothing to do with the sport should influence its destiny.
Every person that goes to a hockey game is made very aware of the possible risks of attending. The parents of any child attending should be aware. In nearly every case the decision to be in that seat is an informed one.
Do you not do anything, never leave the house? Is knitting your only passion? Clearly I am fishing here. But, imagine the headlines, “Granny dies in freak knitting accident, falls on her needles.” Wow, we need to ban or reform knitting… Stinking stupid hobby anyway.
If attending is too dangerous for you, please don’t go. Don’t call for the ruin of it for the rest of us.
Really though, I am curious, what sport do you like to watch? What do you do outside? If you don’t do or enjoy something that has had more deaths associated with it in its history than the NHL has, then you have a life I certainly could not find fulfilling.
.
I knew I would find this thread here. Over on FARK it quickly degenerated in awful jokes. But anyway:
As has been pointed out, it is much more dangerous to attend an auto race, international soccer match, or air show.
There is no need to have a stupid, knee-jerk reaction to this tragic accident, because that’s all it is. An ACCIDENT. The puck hit another spectator first! What happened to that person?
There is no “problem” here, and I am defining “problem” as “something that is obviously wrong with hockey that needs a huge fix right away” (I’m not saying it’s ok that someone died).
Erecting large nets around a hockey rink will ruin visibility for all spectators at the arena and on TV, and be largely impractical. It’s already bad enough for the people down by the glass, as anyone who has ever sat that close will know–straight on looks really cool, but try looking down the angles, especially in a rink without seamless glass.
The glass around the rink also cannot be made very much higher either. The panes would weigh so much that it would be a danger in itself. Just ask Janet Gretzky, who once got clobbered by a falling pane of glass.
As a hockey player and fan, I resent the OP’s statement that it is a “stinking stupid sport” and that it needs to be banned or reformed. The “or something” in the thread title makes me suspect that this was a simple knee-jerk “won’t someone PLEASE think of the children” post.
I can’t wait for the lawsuit, which hopefully will be laughed out of court. Spectators are warned of the dangers and assume risk (read the back of any ticket) by attending such an event. IANAL but I think to get around this waiver you would have to prove that someone still acted with a disregard for safety. For example, Columbus couldn’t put this waiver on their tickets, play a game with no glass around the ice, and expect not to be sued by the dozens of people in the front row who would be injured.
To sum up–hockey good, tragic accidents bad. My condolences to the family.
No more baseball either:
$1 Million Ballpark Injury Award Strikes Out
This really belongs in the Pit so I, and perhaps other posters, could truly express how inane such statements are, and because this is really nothing than a thinly-veiled attempt at a rant against hockey. I really don’t see much debate here. Hockey is hard enough to follow as it is; netting would kill it as a spectator sport (once sitting behind home plate was enough - I’d rather sit further away and have an unobstructed view).
Or perhaps we should give you the benefit of the doubt. You might believe that soceity should find a way to prevent any sort of freak accident (and this was nothing more than that) and outlaw those it can’t prevent. Of course, that means that no one can ever move again, but at least we’ll all be safe.
I think it would be possible to come up with an appropriate netting that wouldn’t show up on TV and that wouldn’t be noticed by the audience. The netting doesn’t even have to be strong enough to stop shots, it just needs to slow them down a lot.
I think cost is the bigger issue, I have no idea how much it would cost for the nets but if it’s more than $200,000 per arena then it probably isn’t worth it.
[Lumbergh] Um, yeahhhh, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you there…[/Lumbergh]
I’ll second what D_Odds said about sitting behind home plate at a baseball game. It sucks.
You’re certainly free to disagree, but I would think that the netting at an outside venue would have to withstand a lot more force than netting at an inside venue due to wind.
I could very well be wrong though, and I wouldn’t advocate putting up netting that would distract much from the game.
Dem’s fightin’ words! :mad:
I agree with the above posters–one accidental death does not a systemic problem make.
Nahh, play it with a fully domed roof so the puck never goes out of play … now that’d be a real ball tearer.
I am glad that most everyone here recognizes that this was a tragic accident. The young girl who died would have turned 14 today. It is sad when anyone dies young, and sadder still when it is an accident.
I guess that foolsguinea probably wanted to start this thread in The Pit since he/she has not come back to defend his/her “extreme” comments or the challenges to them. I would suggest that foolsguinea start a thread about this in The Pit because I have some things to share that can’t be repeated in this forum.
Improving the glass around the rink is a technical challenge. Perhaps a lighter material can take the place of tempered glass? I understand that there are problems with stock plexiglass, though I cannot remember what those problems are.
Another geometrical trick that would help make the rink glass safer is to have the top two feet or so of the glass curve IN towards the rink. That would greatly increase the number of patrons protected from direct puck shots. Also, it would force a puck shot to have to come off the ice at a much more extreme angle to get into the stands - an angle more closely approaching perpendicular to the ice. Such a highly-angled shot would lose much force to gravity by the time it got over the curved glass.
Unless I’m mistake, the material around the hocky rink is polycarbonate. Plexiglass would be much too fragile. Glass would be heavy, and probably too fragile too.
Extending the arena walls higher and/or adding a roof would cost a lot - polycarbonate is expensive, and needs to be replaced periodically. On those robot fighting competition shows (BattleBots, Robot Wars) they’ve got a full floor-to-ceiling wall between the arena and the audience. Those arenas cost a fortune to build, and all the armor is so heavy that it limits what venues can hold a tournament.
Plexiglass was the standard for about 50 years or so. In the last few years a number of new arenas have gone to seemless glass. That is just that - tempered glass without the support struts that are required for plexiglass. Tempered glass is the best for the fans since it is clean, clear and pretty much obstruction free. However, there seems to be a trend back to plexiglass for the simple reason of player safety.
The tempered glass has very, very little give and being checked into it is like being slammed into a brick wall in some rinks. This has been linked to an increase in the number of concussions that players have suffered in the last 5 or 6 seasons.
I have my doubts that this would do anything for safety. Generally when a puck goes out of play it’s because of a deflection and the puck sails over the glass. Pucks don’t normally hit the glass 2 feet below the top then go over. And if they do, they wouldn’t be going very fast.
I really don’t see a reason to do anything. Her death is tragic, but it’s the first ever. I don’t know what the total attendance is for all of NHL history, but I imagine the statistics would show hockey as a very safe spectator sport.
No, no … curving the glass inwards cuts down the available angle for a bee-line puck shot (or a defelection, for that matter) to get into the stands.