It’s become quite standard among NHL teams to be as vague as possible when announcing their players’ injuries, but Dallas Stars head coach Ken Hitchcock is intent on bucking that trend.
The league’s third-winningest coach of all time spoke to reporters on Tuesday, explaining why he doesn’t bother with today’s preferred descriptors of “upper- and lower-body injuries”.
“I think we collectively hate playing the game,” said Hitchcock. “What I mean by that is we say upper body, then you go on the phone, and then you look up things or you go to the doctors, find out what part of the upper body … we try to make your work easier, quite frankly.”
There are still many teams that do have interest in keeping the specifics of an injury under wraps, though Hitchcock isn’t buying the notion that opposing players will target one of his own if they know there’s a weak spot.
“Nobody thinks like that,” said Hitchcock. “Our feeling is just, tell them what the injury is and move it forward and let’s stop the dance.”
[relatedlinks]