ArticleCanadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique2025
Fist fighting and increased mortality post-retirement among National Hockey League players.
Article in Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveFist fighting among hockey players is thought to have long-term impacts on health. Because of methodological concerns of previous studies, we undertook a retrospective cohort study among retired National Hockey League (NHL) players to estimate rates of all-cause mortality according to the cumulative number of fights in their careers.
methodsThe cohort comprised male hockey players, excluding goaltenders, who played in the NHL from 1967 to 2022. We compiled their birth and death data, body mass index at entry, and other characteristics of playing. We used the proportional hazards model, with age at retirement as the time axis, to estimate mortality rates through July 31, 2024, in relation to the total number of fights in the NHL. Hazard ratios (HR) were adjusted for body mass index and year starting in the NHL. Mean survival after retirement by fighting status was also computed.
resultsAmong the 5411 retired players, 407 had died, 2082 (38.5%) never fought, and 759 (14.0%) fought ≥ 30 times. We found a positive linear response between the total number of fights and the risk of mortality: the adjusted HR per 10 fights was 1.04 (95% CI, 1.01, 1.07). Using this estimate, compared to non-fighters, the HR for five fights was 1.02 (95% CI, 1.00, 1.03), and for 50 fights it was 1.20 (95% CI, 1.02, 1.41). The mean loss of survival among those who fought ≥ 10 times compared with ≤ 1 time was 2.5, 2.1, and 1.5 years for those who started playing in 1970, 1980, and 1992, respectively.
conclusionOur findings suggest that fighting in NHL games increases rates of mortality post-retirement, but that these impacts are substantially less than reported previously. We recommend that the NHL establish standardized methods for collecting fight data to more accurately capture the lifetime fighting history and its associated health impacts for its players.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.