NHL News: League Legends Standing Behind Concussion-Prevention Innovations

The NHL is a league built on tradition and history, but the fact that many legends of the sport are starting to push for innovation when it comes to concussion prevention means it will happen sooner rather than later.

That’s where Mark Messier and Keith Primeau come into play.

With any league that depends as much on their history as the NHL does, the biggest hurdle in major innovations is the approval of the sports innovators and legends that don’t want to see it changed.

Just as the players were against helmets when they were first instituted, there has been a resistance of bulking up the helmets. While it seems obvious to favor safety over style, many of the current NHL players wouldn’t go for the goonier looking helmet.

So what’s the solution?

The Stanley Cup champion Messier has started the Messier Project to develop a new material to use in helmets in order to absorb more of the impact and disperse it away from the brain.

Messier’s site shows exactly what the material does:

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The M11 helmet features Cascade Sports’ revolutionary Seven Technology, a cutting-edge liner system utilizing a ground-breaking impact attenuation system to more effectively manage energy transfer from direct impact. On impact, the Seven Technology liner system compresses to laterally displace energy and within seconds, it completely resets to ready for the next impact. 

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As for Keith Primeau, the topic of concussions has been something he has striven to fight against since his own career was cut short by them.

Primeau is advocating the technology of Impact Indicators. The idea is that when a helmet senses a collision that is deemed hard enough to concuss someone, a green light turns red and that player needs to be evaluated.

Neither of these methods will stop concussions, but they are trying to reduce the number of occurrences each year on NHL players and on the hundreds of thousands of younger hockey players.

With technology being as advanced as it is right now, there has to be more steps taken to keep all athletes safe from potential brain damage. It also helps the process of advocating for concussion awareness when the biggest star in the NHL is out indefinitely with that same ailment.

Check back for more on the National Hockey League as it comes, and check out Bleacher Report’s NHL Page to get your fill of all things hockey.

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