Hockey is a physical sport, but that doesn't mean every aggressive move is safe or acceptable. ESPN reports the Florida Panther's David Booth learned this the hard way in 2009, when he received a direct hit to the head, fell and bashed his head on the ice, and lost consciousness. He woke up in the ambulance with no idea where he was. "It was like I was possessed. I was trying to break the seat belts," Booth said.
His concussion was so bad that he doesn't remember being hit, or even being in the hospital. While Booth was able to play again after his injury, he said it permanently affected not only his "cognitive abilities," but it also made him less aggressive on the ice, in a way that almost sounds reminiscent of PTSD.
One team's general manager explained, "Because of that hit, we had to make some adjustments to the way the game was being officiated. To make a safer environment, and to protect our players." The new regulation, Rule 48.1, was added for the 2010-11 season. While the rule's wording had to be adjusted a bit after two years, the goal was the same: to make sure dangerous hits like that happened less. According to SB Nation, after 2013, the rule read that a player isn't allowed "a hit resulting in contact with an opponent's head where the head was the main point of contact and such contact to the head was avoidable."
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