Between the death of Alexei Cherepanov, Jiri Fischer's career-ending incident and the death of Windsor Spitfires forward Mickey Renaud, the NHL and its developmental leagues have worked very, very hard over the past half-decade to improve preventative heart testing, with the NHL, AHL and CHL attemtping to ensure that congential heart defects are discovered before players are subjected to further risks.

But no system of testing can totally prevent the kind of tragedy that occurred on Monday, when Acadie-Bathurst Titan try-out Jordan Boyd collapsed and died at the team's rookie camp. The Globe and Mail's Alan Maki and Sean Gordon note that the science of ECG's and EKG's is not exact:

The Quebec Remparts consulting cardiologist, Paul Poirier, said he’s spent several hours in the past two days reassuring parents of QMJHL players and other athletes (he also works with college and Olympic competitors).

“No system of testing is ever going to be perfect, and I think we have to be careful about escalating the screening regime, because that raises other questions: Who’s going to do the testing? Who’s going to interpret the results?” Poirier said. “It’s tricky. Some athletes might have electrocardiogram results that look like a red flag if the person examining them doesn’t know they’re a high-level athlete. A detailed medical history is sufficient to detect the vast majority of cases, which are rare. In 15 years, I’ve only had to prevent one player from going out on the ice.”

Continued