Editorial note: This piece was co-written by Atif Kukaswadia, PhD, and Ary Maharaj, M.Ed. Atif is a writer for the Public Health Perspectives blog on the PLOS network, and Ary is a writer for Silver Seven, an SBNation blog about the Ottawa Senators hockey team. This piece is being cross-published on both platforms. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION

When we think of places for disease outbreaks, a few examples quickly come to mind: classrooms, college dorms, crowded trains. Another suggestion? The confines of the National Hockey League, where players are surrounded by literal blood, sweat, and tears. When you watch a hockey game, you’ll routinely see players spitting, swapping saliva through the sharing of water bottles, sweating — either through playing the game, using the same towel to dry themselves off, or rubbing their sweaty glove in another player’s face during a scrum. Add to this the intense travel and training schedule, along with the close quarters players are in between games, and this means that, among other things, the NHL is a breeding grounds for illness, even rare ones that do not generally permeate the public sphere.

 

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