By Curtis Rush and Isabelle Khurshudyan, The Washington Post
TORONTO — Ken Hitchcock was tired of the dance. In his 22nd year behind an NHL bench, the Dallas Stars head coach decided he would break from the prevalent, league-wide trend of referring publicly to player injuries only as “upper body” or “lower body” ailments.
“It’s an injury and within two hours after we tell you (the media) it’s upper body, you know exactly what it is, so why not just tell you?” Hitchcock said earlier this season.
The practice of vague, binary injury designations was adopted decades earlier by coaches who believed they were protecting their players by being vague.