Student dies after puck strikes chest

A 22-year-old University of New Haven student playing in a recreational league hockey game died after being hit in the chest by a puck with just three seconds left in the game.

Nathan Crowell of Portsmouth, R.I., was wearing a chest protector, but the puck apparently hit an unprotected part of his torso just below the pad.

"This is a terrible, terrible tragedy," said Howard Saffan, owner of SportsCenter of Connecticut on River Road, where Crowell was playing.

Saffan said one of the players on the ice Thursday night was a doctor, who immediately began performing CPR on Crowell and kept him alive until medical personnel arrived. Crowell was later pronounced dead at Bridgeport Hospital that night.

The incident occurred after Crowell "slid on the ice to block a shot and got hit in the chest by a puck," police Detective Thomas Federowicz said.

Police and emergency medical personnel were called at 10:52 p.m. Thursday for a report of an unresponsive male hockey player, Federowicz said.

When they arrived, there were several people trying to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Crowell, Federowicz said.

"An investigation is ongoing, but all factors indicate that this death was nothing more than a tragic accident," police said.

Saffan, who is also president of the American Hockey League's Bridgeport Sound Tigers, said, "The two teams were just devastated. This is just so tragic."

SportsCenter of Connecticut, near Sikorsky Aircraft, opened in January 2004. It is a large recreational facility that has an ice rink facility called The Rinks.

It is the only ice facility in Connecticut with rinks on two floors stacked one above the other. It has a year-round amateur hockey league for male or female players ages 21 and older.

There is no "checking" in the league and players are required to wear full protective gear, including chest protectors. Pucks fly around at high speed and there is often incidental contact, but serious injuries are infrequent and no one has ever been killed at The Rinks.

All players are required to sign a release of liability and assumption of risk form. The stated risks include "permanent paralysis, disability and death."

The league is divided into three tiers, depending on ability. Crowell played in the middle tier for a team called the Chiefs.

Crowell and his teammates played the 9:30 p.m. game on the upper rink against the Kamco Lumberjacks.

The third period was about to end when a Kamco player took a slapshot and Crowell positioned himself to block the puck, a routine play during most games.

"There was three seconds left and he went down to block a shot. The shot hit him right below his (chest) pad," Saffan said.

Crowell immediately collapsed and the players on the ice figured he had the wind knocked out of him, Saffan said.

Players turned Crowell over, saw his face was turning blue and realized something was terribly wrong.

"There was an ER doctor on the ice. He got to him within 30 seconds. He was able to keep him alive, and (EMS crews) got him to Bridgeport Hospital, but he died at the hospital," Saffan said.

Police Detective Ben Trabka said he was unaware of anyone in the area dying while playing hockey, but noted there are a few deaths nationwide each year. Similar fatal injuries are more common in youth baseball, when an unprotected player is hit in the chest by a ball and the blow stops the heart.

A similar incident occurred during an NHL hockey game in 1998 when St. Louis Blues defenseman Chris Pronger suffered an acute heart attack after being hit the chest during a Stanley Cup playoff game. He recovered quickly, but was sidelined for a few games.

Julie Winkel, director of media relations at the University of New Haven, issued a statement Friday night.

"A Rhode Island native, Nathan Crowell, 22, died Thursday night while playing his favorite sport, ice hockey. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Nathan's family and friends. UNH's Counseling Center and the dean of students will provide counseling services," Winkel said.

Source: New Haven Register, 10/27/07

Players warm to idea of using heated skate blades

More than 30 NHL players have volunteered to be guinea pigs for the latest innovation in hockey equipment — gear that requires batteries.

For now, the league is limiting the use of the Thermablade, a heated blade that reduces friction while skating, to 10 players in practice. But the NHL's senior manager of hockey operations, Kris King, says if all goes well, the blades could be found on NHL players' soles "sooner rather than later."

"We want to make sure it's strong enough," King said. "Since there's a battery floating around inside, we want to make sure everything is going to stay in one piece on a 100 mph slap shot."

Source: USA Today, 10/19/07

Canada-based Therma Blade Inc. is developing a list of players, with the approval of the NHL and NHL Players Association, who will get a crack at testing its new product. The NHL will then query those players to evaluate how the Thermablade performed before the blade wins approval.

"It's really no different than any other equipment company looking to get a product approved," King said.

Much has changed since King retired from the NHL six seasons ago. The use of expensive one-piece composite sticks has become commonplace among skaters. All 30 teams are sporting new, form-fitting Reebok jerseys, meant to decrease drag and water absorption, this season.

"The Thermablade is just another idea NHL players may be interested in," King said.

Like the other innovations, King says there probably will be a trickle-down effect if many of the NHL's top players adopt the blade.

Therma Blade, which counts Wayne Gretzky among its 150 investors, will begin marketing the blade to the public by December for $399.99, a $300 premium over most replacement blades currently available. It can be attached to the boot of many existing skates, which already can cost several hundred dollars.

"We're not trying to cripple the parents who have a 4-year-old playing hockey," said Sam McCoubrey, Therma Blade's vice president of sales and marketing. "We aren't forcing parents to buy it because it's only available in adult sizes. But we spent $300,000 on market research and found there is a significant market for this.

"I think there's going to be interest from the most competitive players to old-timers wishing they were a little bit faster."

For Phoenix Coyotes equipment manager Stan Wilson, the use of the Thermablade won't change his job much.

"We're changing blades on a pretty regular basis anyway," he said. "It's just one more thing that we are going to have to do. We'll just have to get used to the whole battery changing thing."

Nike abandons hockey

Nike just couldn't do it.

Thirteen years after it skated into the hockey industry with its purchase of the world's largest hockey company, Nike is abandoning Canada's national game.

Last week, the iconic sports company whose simple swoosh logo is among the world's most recognized, said it was putting on the block its flagging hockey division, known as NikeBauer.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

In 1994, the year Nike bought Montreal's Canstar Sports, maker of the popular Bauer skates and other equipment, hockey was surging.

The NHL had just added four expansion teams in the U.S. Sunbelt and relocated the Stars franchise to Dallas from Minnesota. Wayne Gretzky was starring for the Los Angeles Kings, and broadcaster ABC was airing NHL playoff games on U.S. network television for the first time since 1980.

Hockey's amateur and minor leagues were making similar strides.

By 1993-94, some 303,000 amateur players were registered with USA Hockey, the sport's governing body in the U.S., up 55 per cent from 1990-91. The sport had generated such a buzz that media company Walt Disney was even investing in hockey overseas, buying a stake in Russia's famed Central Army team.

"I remember (Nike CEO) Phil Knight saying at the time that hockey was North America's fourth-most culturally-significant sport," said John Collins, a former senior executive in Nike's hockey division. "He wanted in."

Nike would wind up paying a frothy $395 million (U.S.) for Canstar, a 50 per cent premium above the level its shares were trading in prior months.

Industry executives now say even though a number of suitors will probably emerge for NikeBauer, it's doubtful the division will sell for more than $150 million – less than half what Nike originally paid for it.

Nike said its hockey unit posted sales of about $160 million a year ago, and several industry officials said they estimate the division generated a profit of $20 million. (Sports-equipment companies these days are valued at roughly six or seven times their annual profits, executives say.)

While Nike maintains it's the leading company in the hockey equipment business with 35 per cent of a market some estimate is worth $480 million, several retailers, distributors and competitors said Nike has nevertheless struggled to navigate many obstacles during its tenure in the hockey business.

Nike initially viewed Canstar as a springboard into the rollerblade business, which was sizzling in the mid-1990s.

Canstar's Bauer brand had started selling in-line skates in 1990 and within two years, they accounted for a fifth of the company's $133 million in sales.

By 1994, at least 14 companies were battling for a piece of the $300 million in-line-skate market. One company, First Team Sports, signed up as pitchmen the likes of NHL stars Gretzky and Brett Hull and some in the industry predicted the in-line-skate market would blossom into a $1 billion business.

Rollerblade president John Hetterick said of Nike's purchase of Canstar: "Nike will ... help us get in-line speed skating and roller hockey into the Olympics. This sport will surpass ice hockey in a few years."

That's not what happened.

Within five years, sales of in-line skates were beginning to slip, and companies were either folding or looking to see off their rollerblade assets. (In 2004, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association said there were 17 million in-line skaters, compared with 32 million in 1998.)

"It really went south," said Jim Rennie, who published Jim Rennie's Sports Letter, a widely read sporting goods newsletter, from 1977 to 2002.

"Skateboarding came on in popularity and they just marketed in-line skating wrong," Rennie said. "They were too focused on the extreme rollerblader who was doing jumps and everything, not the average skater."

It was no easier on the ice for Nike.

After buying Canstar, Nike decided to allow the Canadian company to operate independently. While Canstar factories churned out Bauer and Cooper branded skates, facilities in the U.S. and overseas produced a separate Nike line.

There were immediate setbacks.

Retailers were returning an inordinate number of skates to Nike because they didn't fit comfortably. The company's top NHL endorsement agent, Detroit Red Wings high-octane star forward Sergei Fedorov, reportedly cut ties with Nike over similar concerns.

Nike subsequently merged the two hockey divisions. Last year, it combined all of its hockey offerings under the NikeBauer brand.

NikeBauer president Mark Duggan said even though Nike may be quitting hockey, there's reason for optimism.

"We've done nothing wrong," Duggan said. "This company has never performed better. Some markets like Eastern Europe and Russia are positioned to grow," Duggan said, adding that because Russia will host the 2014 Winter Olympics, the country will probably try to bolster its amateur programs.

Ice Hockey Federation of Russia executive director Sergey Arutyunyan said in an interview there are roughly 200,000 players in his country's amateur program. Russian television shows about 300 games from the country's top pro hockey league, Arutyunyan said, and some teams have budgets of $60 million – more than some NHL clubs.

"The main obstacle is a poor number of ice rinks," he said. "However, this problem is actively being resolved."

Duggan also said that even though Reebok has an exclusive agreement to provide hockey jerseys to the NHL – a move that has dramatically bolstered its exposure – Nike has ties to some of the sport's top young stars, like Carolina Hurricanes star forward Eric Staal and his three brothers.

Still, Rennie is less sure about NikeBauer's prospects.

"The reality is hockey's a declining market in the U.S.," he said.

Indeed, USA Hockey figures show that in 2005-06, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 442,077 registered players in the U.S., down from 445,245 in 2004-05 – the second-straight year of decline.

By contrast, Hockey Canada had 545,363 registered players in 2006-07, down slightly from the previous year's 552,040.

One unlikely factor in hockey's drop-off in the U.S. may be aging baby boomers, Rennie said.

"Old-timers hockey is key to the business. If you're a dentist playing old-timers, you're going to spend money on good equipment."

Trouble is, many old-timer league players quit the sport for good when they reach their early 60s, Rennie said.

Firenzo Arcadi, who owns Toronto sporting goods store Toronto Hockey Repair Ltd., has another theory about why the hockey business has swooned.

"It's the $900 skate," Arcadi said, referring to NikeBauer's latest offering, a sleek silver, black and blue skate called the Supreme one90 that retails at some stores for $899.

"These companies like Nike are pricing themselves right out of the market," said Arcadi, whose store sells about $2.5 million worth of equipment each year, down from $3 million just four years ago.

"It's at a point where families are having to decide whether they want to pay a $1,100 mortgage or buy skates," he said.

Source: Toronto Star, 10/9/07