Today's National Post has a healthist condemning Don Cherry, one of the elder gods of hockey, for a hockey culture that encourages hits to the head and concussions. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Cherry has consistently argued for a physical form of the game, but one that's sensible: no hits to the head, no cross-checking from behind, and no stick play. So unless he's changed his tune a lot since I left Canada, this is just a cheap shot.
Cherry has previously argued that players wearing face shields are a danger to others as they pay less attention to keeping their sticks down on the ice. One of my honours students a year or so ago found that Cherry was right: players wearing visors were more likely to draw stick related penalties than were other players, all else equal. I'm hoping to get time this coming sabbatical to work up the results with Tim a bit more formally and get the paper out.
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