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Tuesday, Feb. 16, 1999
Playing with pain
Broken bones, blood and bruises part of hockey
By MARK BUTTON
Staff Writer

   The blood pulsing from his head had already begun to seep through the white cloth doctors had wrapped around it when Chris Robertson asked the question.
   Thirty-five stitches had just been inserted into the left side of his face - from temple to cheek - after the blade of a teammates' skate slashed Robertson during the second period of a minor league hockey game two years ago.
   After the doctors finished patching Robertson's skin back together, they wrapped a cloth around his head like a turban. He sat up immediately.
   "Can I go back out and play?" he said.
   The doctors huddled.
   "Well, do you want to go back and play?" one of them said.
   "I feel like I should," he said. "It wouldn't really be worth it, just going out there, getting hurt and not finishing the game."
   Robertson returned to score two goals, including the game-winner.

Finish the game.

   It is the hockey's players unspoken motto.
   "We were just raised that way," Robertson said. "Hockey is a game where lots of things happen: puncture injuries, impact injuries. If there's any possibility at all of going back and playing, it seems like it makes playing the game worthwhile when you do get hurt in it."
   Especially for minor-leaguers like the IceRays, playing with pain is a way of life. These guys are not millionaires. Most live paycheck to paycheck knowing their jobs are never secure.
   "Minor-leaguers know one fundamental factor," said professor William F. Gayton, a sports psychologist at the University of Southern Maine who worked with the Maine Mariners of the American Hockey League from 1987-92.
   "If they are going to move up the ladder, they have to play," Gayton said. "They are willing to play through pain, because they know that's what it is going to take."
   Call it the "old-school" mentality.
   IceRays captain Jody Praznik broke the big toe on his right foot and played in three games before his coach, Taylor Hall, forced Praznik to sit out. This, after Praznik rushed back from a broken ankle in seven weeks, at least three weeks quicker than the injury's recovery time normally takes athletes.
   "I learned in my first year of pro," Praznik said. "My coach was John Brophy, who used to coach in the NHL. He was as hard-nosed a guy as you could imagine. You needed a broken leg not to play. Ever since then, I've played through pain."
   IceRays trainer Maurice Sicard said Praznik has one of the highest pain thresholds on the Corpus Christi team.
   "He's the type that will just play through pain," said Sicard, who has worked with hockey players since 1989. "He had the first cast off his foot way too early for me and you. Normally, that first cast would stay on for six weeks. He had it off in two. He was just so gung-ho."
   For many, the tough-guy mentality is one that is groomed from an early age.
   "To get to this level, hockey players have been playing 60- to 70-game schedules for years and years and years," Central Texas trainer Jason Serbus said. "They're used to that mentality. They know how the system works, so they don't get all worked up over the little things."
   Serbus, who worked as a trainer for the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs from 1996-97, said while it is more common to hear stories of quick recoveries and athletes playing with injuries in hockey than it is in football, comparisons between the two sports are futile.
   "It's apples and oranges," Serbus said. "In football, you only play once a week. Hockey players have three, four, sometimes five games a week. And unlike football, where you might have a single injury that ends a season, hockey players might have two or three injuries that they come back from."

Intimidation permeates hockey.

   "Hockey is not a contact sport," Sicard said. "It is a collision sport, and there is a difference. Baseball, basketball and soccer, those are contact sports. The difference is the intent. There is contact in those sports, but it's not necessarily intentional. In hockey and football the players are hitting each other dead-on, on purpose."
   Part of winning the nightly battle of intimidation in hockey is feigning good health.
   "You would be surprised at the number of injuries guys on this team have played through this year," Robertson said. "A lot of the time, those injuries are not made public because we don't want the other team to know who's hurt."
   Robertson said "finishing the game" is just one of hockey's unwritten rules.
   "You never want to stay down on the ice when you get hurt," he said. "You always want to try and make it to the bench. If you leave the game and it's just stitches, you want to come back.
   "Of course, if it's really bad, like you blow out your knee, you can't come back."
   Unless your name is Jason Welch.
   Last year, the El Paso forward suffered one of sport's most devastating injuries: the torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), which holds the knee together.
   Welch tore the ACL in his right knee against Lake Charles during the first round of the 1997-98 Western Professional Hockey League playoffs and decided to finish the season before undergoing surgery.
   Playing with extreme pain and without a functional ACL, Welch recorded 14 goals and 15 assists in 12 playoff games as the Buzzards claimed their second WPHL championship.
   "Our trainer was able to keep me going with a lot of tape," Welch said. "I had complete reconstructive surgery after the playoffs. It took me six months to fully recover."
   Which was three months sooner than normal, said El Paso trainer Mark Scott. Having worked in sports medicine for more than 13 years - spending time with football, baseball, soccer and now hockey players - Scott is somewhat of an authority on athletes and injuries.
   "In my opinion," Scott said. "hockey players are the true athletes. They play through anything and put their bodies through incredible amounts of pain."
   Welch never practiced during the playoffs, and Scott had to manually manipulate Welch's knee after each shift. Scott applied ice to the knee during each intermission, then re-taped the injured knee.
   Welch said his competitive nature took over when deciding whether or not he would continue to play. His will to win was stronger than the need to play healthy, he said.
   "In hockey," Welch said, "you almost have to play with pain if you are going to play at all."
   Staff Writer Mark Button can be reached at 886-3613, through e-mail at buttonm@scripps.com or on the internet at www. caller.com.

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