Calgary Flames defenseman Oliver Kylington didn’t suit up at all in 2022-23, instead staying in his home country of Sweden on personal leave. Today, Kylington opened up about his year-long absence to Swedish outlet HockeyNews.se, saying (translated) that “These are things that have been going on in the family for many years but which escalated to become worse, and there were mental and psychological problems I suffered from.” A seemingly refreshed Kylington said at the end of the interview that he’s now feeling “absolutely fantastic” and is looking forward to re-join Calgary next season, as general manager Craig Conroy confirmed last month.
The 2015 second-round pick had a lengthy development track, but the 26-year-old Swede fully arrived on the scene in 2021-22. Stepping closer to a top-four role, Kylington recorded career-highs across the board with nine goals, 22 assists, 31 points, and a +34 rating in 73 games. With the addition of MacKenzie Weegar into the picture in Calgary, however, Kylington might start out next season in a bottom-pairing role under new head coach Ryan Huska. That’s assuming Noah Hanifin starts the season with the team, which is far from a given as he remains a trade candidate.
Other notes from around the hockey world this afternoon:
- The QMJHL confirmed today that fighting will be banned entirely in the league beginning with the 2023-24 campaign, following up on pressure from the Quebec parliament earlier this year to enforce such a rule. After adding a ten-minute misconduct for fighting to the standard five-minute major penalty a few seasons back, a fight in the QMJHL will now automatically result in ejection from the game for both players, more closely resembling the NCAA. A ladder system of suspensions is also being introduced to supplement the automatic ejections. Per the league, an “instigator” will be issued an automatic one-game suspension, an “aggressor” will receive an automatic two-game suspension (with the potential for more), and an additional automatic one-game suspension will be imposed for players who fight multiple times in the same season. The NHL has not commented on the rule nor given any indication they intend to follow in the footsteps of one of their largest junior-league feeders anytime soon.
- The Vegas Golden Knights’ AHL affiliate in Henderson has added Brent Kisio to their staff as an assistant coach, per a team release. Kisio, the son of Golden Knights pro scout Kelly Kisio, had spent the past eight seasons as the head coach of the WHL’s Lethbridge Hurricanes. He also served as an assistant coach for Team Canada at last year’s 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship, where his squad took home the gold medal. Henderson will be under new leadership next year, with Ryan Craig replacing the outgoing Manny Viveiros as head coach.
“following up on pressure from the Quebec parliament”
Why is government involved in what a hockey league does? Will length of shifts be next?
@Gbear – I call that “unacceptable meddling”. How about you? Unless this business, called the QMJHL, has tax $$$ going to it from John & Jane Q. Public, the greedy governmenters need to mind their own business.
Sports leagues are businesses regulated by laws just like any other and have always had government influence/oversight… whether that is good or bad is a matter of opinion, obviously.
We’ve seen it recently with Congress heavily involved in MLB issues.
Because sports concussions, especially in teen players who have not yet fully developed their back and neck muscles, are a point of discussion in Canada. Have been for years. I would not be shocked if hockey fights are banned professionally within my lifetime. Grown men in the NHL aren’t dying directly on the ice, but suicide rates of concussed athletes are extremely high. Those risk factors increase with a major concussion before the age of 25.
Most women’s and girls leagues in Canada have banned fighting and heavy hits because women are statistically more prone to head injuries, owing to anatomical differences in the head and neck muscles.
Professional sports aren’t safe. None of them are. Trying to make them safe will end up ruining their appeal entirely both to watch and to play. The “danger” and “risk” elements are part of the package. Grown men can make their own risk assessments and do not need to be saved from themselves. There’s not a single pro athlete that doesn’t know the risks of playing their sport and accept them completely. Maybe the kids fight too much, but this is pretty excessive and may end up increasing major slashing incidents and other infractions far more dangerous than the thing being eliminated. We’ll have to see.
Concussions occur far more often from heavy body checks, so are those days numbered too? For “safety”? Should probably not do it on ice with lethal weapons on your feet either, that’s dangerous. Someone could be killed which btw is true as it is with fighting, but also hyperbolic nonsense. You’re more likely to be killed by getting hit in the head with a puck, so we better make blocking shots illegal too or just use a foam puck instead. Too dangerous. You’d probably have to just scrap all four major sports for being too dangerous. Boxing? Forget about it.
We should stop trying to make inherently dangerous things safe. The women’s league is real safe. Their hockey league failed in Canada and they had to beg the NHL to carry them. It’s not because they’re women, it’s because that brand of hockey is boring and people won’t spend their valuable time watching it.
As someone who has actually watched PHF games, I will straight up tell you that those games are absolutely not boring. It’s a small league with low – but growing – attendance that is practically brand new compared to the NHL. Give it time.
Also, no one is saying to remove physicality from the sport entirely. Removing fighting from a league for TEEN BOYS is the pragmatic thing to do, so more of them actually have a chance to make the NHL without lifelong concussion damage. As I mentioned before, teen boys do not have fully developed back and neck muscles, so a hit to the head is going to do much more damage than it would to a grown man. Even if we did go the extra mile and eliminate fighting from the NHL, we would still have big hits and a physical game… Just without people getting punched in the head.
The QMJHL does/has received significant government funding, especially during COVID
In fact, their move to increase the severity of penalties for fighting a few years ago was influenced directly by the Quebec parliament’s multi-million dollar relief package: link to thehockeynews.com
@Mac (and everyone else) – Can we not assume that the grown men operating these various leagues along with parents can decide these issues without the government getting involved?
Whether one likes fighting or not, these are issues for the participants in the game to decide, not politicians.
Government has a responsibility to protect public health. By your logic, we should let tobacco companies and snokers decide smoking legislation. Concussions in sport are a public health concern, thereby falling under the purview of the ministry responsible for health. The framing of, “We shouldn’t let politicians decide” is fundamentally dishonest, because at least here in Canada, the Ministry of Health (and provincial equivalents) are agencies staffed by people whose job it is to understand information and make recommendations to Parliament. This isn’t a car salesman congressman deciding he wants this change, this is people whose entire career is based around public health policy requesting consideration of data from the Quebec legislature.
@Gbear – When it involves illegal substance use/abuse, then, yes, government intervention is needed. When it means/implies that government entities are trying to re-write league rules, then no, they should butt out. The bad part of this is the ineffectiveness of many leagues to get headshots out of the game. Bettman’s “how-to model” is a joke. It seems like every night I’m listening to a game and the commentators have to ask out loud, “Why is he still in the game?”. Well, after that hard hit, the concussion spotter, who is apparently nowhere to be found, didn’t signal down to the bench to remove the player (remember what happened to Jonathan Quick?). The government doesn’t have expertise here, just the desire to corrupt the sport, or even try to abolish it. Hey, Canada, there’s a boatload of us on the U.S. side of the border that won’t stand for that any more than you guys.
Show me where government is trying to corrupt or abolish the sport. You are being hyperbolic over something completely benign.
@PyramidHeadcrab – These are some of the first signs to either castrating the sport, or eventually getting rid of it. It’s almost never done overnight, but eroded over the span of years.
Your analogy to tobacco is an odd one given basically every country on Earth has eschewed reason regarding the health impacts of tobacco and opted for that sweet, sweet green. Inhaling secondhand smoke can cause the same health issues as smoking yourself – for that reason alone it should very clearly be illegal. And I say that as someone who is fairly libertarian.
@PyramidHeadcrab – Your analogy doesn’t work because there are non-smokers and smokers who exist in the same spaces, whereas there are only hockey players involved in playing the sport. If hockey players were going into the stands to beat up spectators, then they would fall under the purview of government laws.
But are you suggesting that the parents of these kids don’t have their best interest at heart, more so than the government?
Extremely paraphrasing here, but in the QMJHL’s release they state that you can be killed in a hockey fight. Of course, they are right, but by that logic they might as well ban vending machines from their stadiums, as they kill a person or two each year (which is, by the way, a person or two more then are killed year in hockey fights).