By Brian Whitwham
In order to make game nights safer for the Ottawa 67’s fans, the Civic Centre now has protective netting at both ends of the arena to prevent flying pucks from injuring spectators.
Jason O’Connor, spokesman for the 67’s, says the netting was up for the Oct. 11 game and has caught, on average, three pucks per match. Fans, however, are adujusting to peering through the nets.
“It’s a shock to most people,” he says, adding that most people understand it’s for their safety.
O’Connor says the netting was set up due to a directive passed over the summer by the Canadian Hockey League. The CHL is an umbrella organization made up of the Ontario Hockey League, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and the Western Hockey League.
Gilles Courteau is the commissioner of the Quebec league and vice president of the CHL. He says many leagues started to review their own safety policies after Brittanie Cecil, 13, was killed by a puck that hit her in the stands at a Columbus Blue Jackets National Hockey League game on March 15, 2002.
But he says the arenas in Quebec had their own netting as early as the late 1980s, as part of the policy of the Régie de la Sécurité dans les Sports du Québec, a provincial office in charge of regulating amateur sports. The regulator has since disbanded but Courteau says the Quebec league kept the rule, “because it was a good initiative.”
He says the CHL decided to make the netting mandatory since the NHL had already done so and since the Quebec league had endorsed it.
Ted Baker, director of hockey operations and referee-in-chief of the Ontario Hockey League says the CHL passed the motion but it’s the responsibility of the other leagues to ensure that the netting is installed.
“All of our facilities have been very supportive,” he says. “A number of our facilities had already had this put in place.”
The OHL ordered that arenas have the netting by Dec. 31. Baker declined to say whether there would be a penalty for arenas without the feature but he says arenas would be dealt with according to the situation. He says most teams need to go through the city to get the netting since they don’t own the arena. This brings about the possibility of lengthy waiting periods, but Baker says that hasn’t been the case so far.
“There haven’t been any red flags raised from any specific city councils or facilities, other than the normal implementation process when you’re putting a significant addition on to a facility,” he says.
Baker says “It’s tough to gauge” the net’s effectiveness.
There are two St. John ambulance drivers at each 67’s game to deal with injuries. Angel Ellens, the provincial duty officer for St. John, says they can’t comment until after a few months of monitoring.
Meanwhile, Blaine Bouchard, a Centretown resident who attended the Oct. 4, home opener, says the new measure “definitely helps,” but the area along the sides is still “pretty dangerous.”
The section (near the side boards) had a lot of pucks flying in at high speed,” he says, adding that one woman needed medical attention when she was smacked in the nose and another man was hit in the head.
Bouchard says about six pucks flew into the stands and while only two people were hit, there were other close calls.
O’Connor says the 67’s don’t keep a record of the number of cases in which fans are injured by pucks because it’s rare, and for now the Civic Centre won’t be adding any more netting since they’re in compliance with the CHL rule.
While stats on this type of injury are scarce, there are examples of people being seriously injured by flying pucks. In 1998, a mother in Manitoba lost her sight in one eye after being hit by a puck at her teenaged son’s game. In 1999, a nine-year-old Regina girl suffered a fractured skull among other injuries after being hit in the forehead. In 2000, a 21-year-old man in Altona, Manitoba was hit with a puck that put him in a coma. He died five days later.
O’Connor says that if people sitting at either end really can’t watch the game through the netting, they will be moved to another spot.
But for now, he says the fans “are a little more secure with a little more piece of mind.”