Daniel Winnik blocks shot with his head, doesn’t miss a shift

By Ian Oland On October 20, 2016  10 Comments

During a late third period power play, Daniel Winnik dove to the ice in an attempt to block a Reilly Smith shot from the point. Winnik was successful, but he paid a price.

The Caps forward blocked the slap shot off the side of his head.

Video

Winnik laid on the ice in pain for a minute as Head Athletic Trainer Greg Smith made his way out to fallen Caps forward. Eventually, Winnik would get up and leave the ice on his own power.

CSN Mid-Atlantic replays showed the puck struck the side of Winnik’s helmet. That’s good because Winnik is the only Capital who doesn’t wear a face shield.

After going back to the locker room, Winnik returned to the bench only several minutes.

He didn’t miss a shift.

Update: Winnik lost part of his ear.

Full Coverage of Caps at Panthers



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  • gocaps

    Canadian Machine Never Breaks?

  • Graham D
  • Sarah

    I am a bit uncomfortable with this. Neurological health is nothing to take lightly! Go sit for longer than a sec, make sure you don’t have a concussion or something worse, you aren’t less manly or tough for taking care of your brain.

  • RY
  • sweepstakes19

    I feel like if you get hit in the head like that you should absolutely miss more than a shift. You’re right, It isn’t being tough, it’s being negligent of your health.

  • Matt

    glancing blows like that are very different to ones that typically cause concussions. Also given that his reaction was to writhe in pain, that’s usually a sign of a more surface level injury – brain injuries usually result in slow/no movement

    (and now that the news about the war has come out that seems about right)

  • sweepstakes19

    I don’t doubt you’re right and I certainly hope Winnik is ok. However, Winnik was only able to come back so quickly because of the lax protocols in place. The NHL doesn’t take blows to the head as seriously as it needs to. In my opinion, I would rather they over-correct, so that situations like last night are treated (maybe) too seriously, than the system we have now. Hockey values toughness and grit, which is totally great most of the time. But it also means that players lie or play through issues they should not. That decision should be taken out of their hands, and it should be standard practice for every significant hit to the head.

  • Keith, A Coin

    They did do a concussion test because there was head contact but a direct blow like this isn’t what causes a concussion. That’s how skull fractures happen and he didn’t get a skull fracture because those are what helmets are made to prevent. A concussion is theorized to be caused my rapid movement of the brain either by the brain knocking against the skull or the brain stretching and contracting (it isn’t 100% sure yet) but none of those would happen from this play.

  • Sarah

    Well yes mild TBI/concussion is often caused by things like whiplash; as far as I know the theory is that the damage is mostly axonal shearing, and so causes disruptions in gross connectivity. (One of the labs in my dept just got a grant to do TBI research in mice, so stay tuned, we might know more about this process soon!) But you can get some pretty severe localized TBI from just getting hit in the head really hard. Obviously helmets minimize this, but they’re not miracle workers. My point was just that sports culture tends to value toughness in playing through injury, and that your brain is really important for, like, everything, so getting hit in the head by something really hard may require a little more monitoring.

  • Matt

    While that’s all well and good, keeping a guy out who was clearly not concussed just because he was hit in the head isn’t fair to the player either.

    We absolutely need to err on the side of caution when it comes to head injuries, but like I said above nothing about his reaction in any way indicated brain trauma. It all pointed toward superficial injury. He was immediately taken to the back room and no doubt placed into the quiet room for evaluation. It would’ve been very apparent that he was entirely lucid and hadn’t suffered any sort of serious brain injury. It would be the equivalent of taking a guy out for taking a nasty high stick – just because they were hit in the head doesn’t mean it was the type of play that can cause a concussion. A puck only making a glancing blow is going to hurt like a sonofabitch, but it’s a very very low likelihood for causing a concussion – if it had hit squarely, that’s a different story, but this quite clearly wasn’t that situation.