Sports: NHL Hockey: Winnipeg gets a new league franchise, and public goes mad with joy!

CBC News (May31,2k11)

a refWrite recommends sports news-story

Winnipeg cheers return of NHL

'It's a fantastic day for the city,' says Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz

CBC Sports 

Posted: May 31, 2011 7:06 AM CT 

Last Updated: May 31, 2011 3:14 PM CT 

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The price of admission3:50

Premier talks hockey3:20

A deal has been reached to bring a National Hockey League team back to Winnipeg for the first time since 1996.

A deal to move the NHL's Atlanta Thrashers to the Manitoba capital was announced Tuesday at press conference at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg.

The team will play in the 2011-12 season.

"Today, on behalf of my family, our partner David Thomson, and our entire organization, I am excited beyond words to announce our purchase of the Atlanta Thrashers," said Mark Chipman, chairman of True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd.

As soon as the announcement was made by Chipman, thousands of fans shouted, cheered, clapped, whistled, popped champagne and sang the Stompin' Tom Connors anthem The Hockey Song at two main party places in the city: the famous intersection of Portage and Main, and The Forks marketplace.

Portage and Main was shut down to traffic for a couple of hours as an estimated 1,000 people gathered there.

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Sports: Junior Hockey: System exposed by brave med scientists and reporters

Canadian Press, the service to newspapers print and online, also has an online edition of its own. Today CP is running an article by Sheryl Ubelacker "Concussion rate in junior hockey 7 times higher than previously reported: study" (Nov1,2k10). Via Winnipeg Free Press online. Here's Ubelacker's analysis:

TORONTO - The proportion of junior hockey players who suffer concussion is far more significant than previously thought, says a groundbreaking study that has researchers calling for changes to how Canada's national game is played at all levels.

"The results of this study demonstrate an incidence of concussion significantly higher than any other study in the literature — seven times higher," lead investigator Dr. Paul Echlin told a news conference Monday.

Echlin, a sports medicine specialist in London, Ont., said the study recorded the number of concussions sustained by members of two unnamed junior hockey teams during the 2009-2010 regular season.

Seventeen players suffered a total of 21 concussions during 52 physician-observed games — with almost one-quarter of those occurring among players involved in on-ice fights, say the researchers, whose study is published in the November issue of the journal Neurological Focus.

Echlin said that during the season, 29 per cent of players who had a concussion went on to suffer a second or recurrent concussions — brain injuries that have the potential to result in lifelong physical and cognitive deficits.

-- Sportikos posting Ubelacker

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