Camp is 5x the groin strain rate

Camps open into a longer season. Under the new CBA, 2026–27 runs 84 games, the first schedule expansion since 1993–94, with two additional divisional games built in. More of the games that get played like playoff games.

A roster that has been off the ice for four months walks into the highest-density skating block of the year, and the injury that follows has been predictable for thirty years.

Here is what the data says about the window you are standing in.

THE WINDOW: Six seasons of league-wide NHL surveillance documented 617 groin and abdominal strains. The incidence density during training camp ran five times the regular season and twenty times the postseason. The majority were adductor. Nearly a quarter were recurrences. (Clin J Sport Med)

WHO ARRIVES EXPOSED: A follow-on cohort of 1,292 NHL players found that athletes reporting fewer than 18 sport-specific off-season sessions carried more than three times the camp injury risk of athletes who trained through the summer. (Med Sci Sports Exerc)

THE NUMBER: Preseason testing on 81 NHL players, followed across two seasons. Adduction strength measured 18% lower in the players who went on to strain. Uninjured group: adduction at 95% of abduction. Injured group: 78%. Below an 80% ratio, risk ran 17 times higher. Flexibility separated nobody. (Am J Sports Med)

THE INTERVENTION: The same group screened 33 of 58 players on one NHL club as at-risk and ran a six-week functional adductor program. The two seasons that followed produced 3 adductor strains against 11 in the two prior — 0.71 versus 3.2 per 1,000 player-game exposures. (Am J Sports Med)

That work is the foundation of how this gets managed today, and it earned that position.

We will say the honest part out loud, because this audience already knows it: adductor strengthening reliably moves strength, range of motion, and the ratio. Whether an isolated prevention exercise on its own drops season-long injury rates is less settled — groin injuries are multifactorial and off-ice compliance in a real season is inconsistent.

Which points at the actual gap.

PROPULSION: The push-off travels through hip extension, abduction, and external rotation. Glute max drives power. The abductors organize the pelvis over a single loaded leg.

RECOVERY: The adductors decelerate the recovery leg and bring it back under the body. Eccentric, at length, at speed, every stride.

THE RATIO: A low number can mean the adductor is weak. It can equally mean the abductor side stopped organizing the pelvis, so the adductor inherits stabilizing work on top of the braking work it already owns. Same threshold. Different mechanism. Different intervention.

Fatigue reassigns the job before it touches the dynamometer.

Frontal-plane control depends on gluteal activation, not gluteal strength alone. Work on single-leg loading found hip abduction force by itself failed to regulate frontal-plane knee position — the gluteus medius had to be actively recruited to produce stability. (PMC)

Capacity and recruitment are different variables, and fatigue attacks the second one first.

A player can hold his summer numbers at intake and still lose glute participation by the fortieth shift of the third practice day. The pelvis drifts. The push-off narrows. The adductor picks up what the abductor stopped organizing, in the exact phase where it is already braking at length.

The shift still looks fine at full speed. Then one crossover arrives where the margin is gone.

Prevention programming happens in a gym, off the ice, unfatigued, on the athlete's own time.

The injury happens on the ice, at speed, deep into a session, inside a movement the athlete performs automatically.

Everything in between is transfer, and transfer is where prevention programs lose their yield.

THE STABILIZER

Applies directional tension across the hip and knee that cues alignment and neuromuscular timing while the athlete moves, so the musculature absorbs force on the way through.

Alongside your programming, the role it plays is narrow and specific:

• Reinforcing pelvic position through the push-off and the recovery
• Supporting glute participation where the frontal plane is most exposed
• Holding a corrected pattern under live conditions, where verbal cueing tends to fall away
• Giving the athlete a felt signal of a compensation while it is happening, at speed

Players wear it for skating, lifting, and return-to-play progressions.

The Stabilizer is already being used amongst the league.

Lab Tested Results:

Reduced loading rate — through the joint on impact

Improved hip moment — with greater glute activation

Faster reaction times — neuromuscular response

Better plane control — frontal and transverse

Early findings, directional. Full publication September 2026. Preliminary report available on request.

Testing measured mechanics in a lab across 4 hour test blocks per participant.