Physical Danger
A regulation NHL hockey puck is one inch thick, three inches in diameter, and weighs between 5.5 and 6 ounces. How boring, you're saying to yourself right now. Yeah, a little, but hang on just a few more seconds. By comparison, a regulation major league baseball weighs about 5.25 ounces and is not frozen solid before the game begins, as is the case with a hockey puck. So the puck is heavier, harder, and, when fired by a fully trained, standard issue hockey player, has roughly 100 lbs. of force imparted onto it. We bring all that up to explain why, once that dark spinning object currently screaming toward you at 90 miles per hour makes contact, imparting nearly all that force onto your forehead, it not only knocks you out cold and gives you a concussion, but also cracks your frontal bone, necessitating 36 stitches and a four-day hospital stay.
If you're a wuss it does, anyway.
To normal humans, that would be an extremely traumatic event. To hockey players, that is known as "Tuesday."
Hockey is just a rough sport. One essential element of the game is a move known as "checking." Checking, for those unfamiliar with the game, is a technical term that, roughly translated into plain English, means "hitting." Generally the hit is made using one's body weight against another player in an attempt to, in as graceful and athletic a manner as possible, smash your opponent into the side boards like a bug on a windshield.