from Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe,

If a general manager could decrease his team’s man-games lost to injury by 20 percent, he would sell his owner’s personal jet to make sure such a scenario became reality. Injuries, especially the preventable groin strains, keep GMs up at night as they call up reinforcements, pursue help on the trade market, and perform hourly check-ins with their medical staff.

The only barrier between teams and better health is acceptance.

Catapult, an Australian company specializing in data to maximize athlete performance, believes it can help teams minimize injuries. Part of Catapult’s injury solution lies within its technology.

One of its products is the OptimEye T5, a wearable device about the size of a deck of cards. If a player wears the OptimEye T5 on his back, the device’s infrastructure — accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, ability to be tracked by indoor wireless nodes — can track speed, workload, even the force of his skating stride.

The appeal to technology that can monitor effort is how the data can help teams improve player usage. According to Catapult, the average NHL team records 252 man-games lost per season, with more than 50 percent of its roster suffering some type of injury.

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