This is clearly not true. The beeline shots that are a danger to the spectators are fired from well away from the boards and the glass. The only thing that makes a significant difference is the height of the glass. The higher the glass goes, more rows are protected from line drives.
With the same amount of glass, curving the top in would actually reduce protection by lowering the top of the glass some small amount.
When a person is a spectator in the rows low enough that a puck could get there, one spots the danger areas on the ice by looking at how much of the rink can be seen without looking through the glass. If you can see a particular spot on the ice from your seat, a puck coming from that spot could hit you. Of course small adjustments need to be made for the gravity and/or aerodynamic curving.
As scotth mentioned, the really hot pucks come from shots well away from the glass (generally between the blue line and the top of the faceoff circle). I don’t think the curvature would prevent anything the current straight tops wouldn’t.
The curved glass might deflect a puck down here and there. But the pucks that would be deflected by curved glass currently hit the glass and pop rather harmlessly into the stands.
The dangerous pucks are the beeline pucks and I don’t think curved glass will do anything about those.
I have to concede your “same amount of glass” point. Just curving in existing amount of glass would not lead to a net gain of rows protected.
However, neither would it lose protection, because the upper edge of the glass would be closer to the shooter than it would be if the glass were straight up and down. Therefore, the puck would have to take a more vertical trajectory to leave the field of play – and the more vertical the trajectory, the more velocity the puck loses as it approaches the apex of its flight.
You would need more raw glass for the “curvature” idea to be employed – but not much more. What I’m thinking about leaves the top edge of the glass at least as high above the rink surface as it is now – not lower – despite the curvature.
The puck should be replaced with Nerf, likewise for the sticks. The players should walk to where it goes, and then have a round-robin rock-paper-scissors contest to determine who gets a turn to hit it.
I still don’t see how the curvature would help. It’s the shots that miss the glass that are the danger and I don’t really see how curving the glass helps the issue. A puck that would hit the curved portion would currently hit the flat portion and that would be enough to take a lot off of the speed.
I also agree with ElwoodCuse that you would be altering the game. The curved glass would alter the way pucks travel around the glass and would knock some pucks that were no danger to fans back into play.
Given that there has only been one death ever, that the curvature is of, at best, dubious utility, and that the curvature would alter play I don’t think it’s a good idea.
There was some race I believe in the 60s where the car went flying into the stands and killed 71 people. That stupid useless sport is still around, and people still go see it every year. Stupid kneejerkers who think the point of life is just being able to breathe and anything else is unecessary. I bet more little girls in the course of history have cut themselves badly on their broken pottery tea-sets and bled to death than have died at a hockey game.
Here’s something else about the injury to the little girl that is interesting: the puck striking her in the head is not what killed her. She did not just drop dead at the scene as many people seem to suppose. She died hours later at a hospital from swelling of the brain. As I remember, what actually made this happen was not the puck hitting her, but rather the way in which her head snapped back after it did. An artery was pinched, which restricted blood flow and caused her brain to swell.
Why didn’t the doctors notice this until after she was dead? Shouldn’t they have seen that her brain was swelling? This sound’s like the doctor’s fault, not the hockey player’s.
I got your solution right here, and it might even boost ratings. A squad of highly trained skeet shooters positioned strategically around the arena. The moment any puck flies above the glass the zamboni man yells “PULL.”
Huh? WTF are you talking about? In most cases (TV & movie deaths not withstanding), people do not just die instantly, no matter what the cause. The hockey puck hit the girl’s head, causing a brain injury, which caused the death. The hockey puck hitting her head (although removed from DIRECT AND IMMEDIATE causation by the mechanics of the fatal injury) is what killed this girl.
Your logic appears equivalent to:
“Defense Lawyer: Although my client shot the victim, the bullet did not kill the decedant. He was alive when he got to the hospital, and died there of loss of blood. The jury should consider that the ER doctors did not stop this bleeding, therefore they should be charged with murder, not my client.”
The hockey puck killed her. It is not the doctor’s fault, or the hockey player’s.
I almost couldn’t phrase my first reponse to this thread. Everything I wrote I had to erase, because if I would have posted it in GD instead of the Pit, I would have been banned. I was pissed.
according to the coroner, death was caused by an injury to an artery at the back of her head. a rather rare injury. the artery was injured by the “snap back” when she was struck on the forehead. she was able to walk to the first aid station after the injury, as time when on, the artery sheared and clotted, blocking off blood flow, causing brain swelling, stroke, and death. without the artery damage she may have survived the skull fracture in the forehead. this type of injury is very, very, difficult to spot.
the other two people who were hit with the same puck had bloody wounds.
to me it was a very freak accident, and injury. i don’t think we should ban hockey; but perhaps we should have fans up to a certain level wear helmuts. i’m still amazed that people played hockey without helmuts.
“The puck struck her in the forehead, causing a skull fracture and some bruising of the brain in the area,” Lewis said. “But that wasn’t what led to her death. It was the snapping back of the head and the damage to that artery.” http://espn.go.com/nhl/news/2002/0320/1354787.html
Your analogy would only be true if people dying from gunshot wounds was very very rare. People get hit in the head with pucks all the time and it doesn’t kill them. Her head snapped back at just the right speed and angle. If you read the link you will see that the pathologists have never seen anything like it.
