The effect of shoulder pad design on head impact severity during shoulder checks in ice hockey

Forty-two percent of concussions in ice hockey are caused by hits involving shoulder-to-head contact. The goal of this project was to determine how shoulder pad stiffness affects head impact severity when players delivered checks to an instrumented dummy. Fifteen participants administered “the hardest shoulder checks they were comfortable delivering” to the head of an instrumented dummy. Trials were conducted with participants wearing two common types of shoulder pads, with and without a 2 cm thick layer of polyurethane foam over the shoulder pad cap. The study found that a 2 cm thick foam layer overlying the shoulder cap reduced peak linear accelerations to the head by 21.6-27.7%, peak rotational velocities by 10.5-13.8%, while causing no significant increase in shoulder impact velocity. Therefore, integration of foam padding on top of plastic caps warrants further examination as a method for preventing brain injuries in ice hockey.