goalie +knee injury?

dpollen54

Registered User
Dec 13, 2010
11
0
hey guys

i know there is another goalie noob intro thread but this is kind of a little different. ive been looking into playing goalie for a while now (ive been a foward playing right wing for about 2 years) and i played goalie once using my goalies pads and i absolutely loved it but the problem is a couple years ago roughly 4. i tore my acl, mcl, pcl, and meniscus in one shot and now i have 2 screws in my left knee. after playing goalie that one time i could feel my knee was really sore. i never had that problem playing as a foward. im guessing its because of "trying" to play in the butterfly. do you guys think it would be risky if i took up goaltending full time? ive been puzzling over this for a while now and dnt know if the risk of me tearing anything again is worth it. how common are those injuries playing goalie?
 

Gino 14

Registered User
Aug 23, 2006
812
0
You pay a doctor good money to answer those type of questions. Do you really want to trust your ability to walk for the rest of your life on a free internet board?
 

dpollen54

Registered User
Dec 13, 2010
11
0
it happened like 4 years ago. i havnt seen the doctor in 3 and he said i should be able to play hockey like normal again without worries. i was just wondering how common some of those injuries were with a goalie since they have to get down in the butterfly a lot
 

Gino 14

Registered User
Aug 23, 2006
812
0
Assuming what your doctor said is true, do you think you may have been favoring your knee to the point where you may have strained it or maybe it's just that you need to find ways to work the knee to gain back some of your lost flexibility?
 

densetsu

Registered User
All it takes is one desperation save for you to lose balance and torque your knee with your upper body weight. Or one guy who skates hard to the net and crashed right into you. Or a defencemen of yours who takes the game too seriously and cross-checks someone right on top of you.

Playing beer league hockey, having people smash into me is a monthly occurrence. Usually it's my own defencemen who push or "redirect" guys into me, in an effort to keep them from cutting across the crease. My own MCL injury, though, came from a large guy (probably 220 lbs) skate full speed down the wing, come across the crease, and bowl me over. My knee and calf were parallel to the ice, and my upper body was smashed backwards and to the side. My MCL didn't tear, it's "permanently stretched", as my doctor put it. All that's supporting my inner knee is muscle strength now. Initially, I waited six weeks while just riding bike and doing some knee exercises my doctor recommended, then started playing hockey. The muscles around my inner knee were initially very sore when I got back into the game, but within a month after returning to the game everything was OK.

There's no guarantees in sports. Some people get several knee injuries, others get none. You can work on flexibility and muscle strength to help prevent injuries -- even working on seeming unrelated things, like hip flexibility, can help you prevent knee injuries. You can build core strength so you don't flop back and torque your knee when someone smashes into you. You can become more aware of your surroundings so you know to get out of the way. But you're still going to be at risk, no matter what.

Your knee pain may be inflammation because of your injury, which can be controlled with Ibuprofin or other OTC drugs. It might be that the muscles around your knee aren't used to this new stress, and need to be built up. Or it could be that your knee is so messed up that you shouldn't be playing goal, period. I doubt any of us here can give you an opinion on your individual situation; we can only make generalized statements and/or tell anecdotal stories, which may or may not apply to you, specifically.

When your doctor said, 3 years ago, that hockey was OK, was he including "playing goal" in that statement? Because the stresses that playing goal put on your body are very different than the stresses that playing out does. And did he mean "if you injured your knee playing hockey, it's OK", or did he mean "the everyday stresses of hockey are OK, but if you re-injure your knee again, you're screwed?".

In short: After 3 years, I'd get re-evaluated by a doctor before committing to play.
 

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