Background

Ice hockey players have a high rate of femoroacetabular impingement, which can lead to hip arthroscopy. Previous studies have not utilized team-based advanced statistics for performance in the setting of hip arthroscopy in National Hockey League (NHL) players.

Objective

The objective was to use team-based advanced statistics to evaluate postoperative performance after hip arthroscopy in NHL players in comparison to their pre-injury performance and matched controls of uninjured skaters. The hypothesis was there would be no significant difference between preoperative and postoperative performance after hip arthroscopy in NHL players, as well as no difference when compared to matched controls of uninjured players.

Methods

A retrospective cohort study was performed by identifying all NHL players who underwent hip arthroscopy from the 2009-2010 to 2021-2022 seasons. A public database was examined that tracks every game missed by NHL players and identifies the type of injury leading to missed games. All players with a “hip, groin, or lower body” injury were then independently confirmed with additional public sources including injury reports, player profiles, and game summaries. There were 56 eligible NHL players found that underwent hip arthroscopy over 12 seasons with a prior healthy season for comparison. Team-based advanced statistics were obtained from the MoneyPuck database (https://moneypuck.com/stats.htm) and www.hockeyreference.com. These statistics included Icetime%, Corsi%, Fenwick%, Goal%, and expected goal%, which were recorded for the pre-injury season, index (injury) season, and first two years after return-to-play (RTP). Relative percentage of each statistic was collected to allow for intra-team comparisons. A control group of NHL players without injury was collected and matched 1:2 by position, age, years of play, and draft round. Players were compared to controls using Student’s t-tests. Analysis of variance and paired t-tests were used to assess significant differences between seasons for both groups. Sample size calculation was performed to determine the sample size required to detect a 5% change in Corsi% with a power of 0.8, yielding required size of at least 12 players in each group.

Results

The RTP rate after hip arthroscopy at the NHL level was 89%. There were no significant decreases in performance in any advanced statistics following RTP after hip arthroscopy in comparison to the pre-injury season or versus a matched control group of uninjured players. There was a significant decrease in games played in the injury season and the first year after RTP versus the pre-injury season, as well as versus a matched control group, without differences thereafter. There were no significant differences for the demographics between the hip arthroscopy group and the matched control group.

Conclusions

This study utilized more advanced and relevant performance-based statistics in comparison to prior studies. There were no significant decreases in team-based performance statistics following RTP from hip arthroscopy for NHL players versus their pre-injury levels or versus a matched control group of uninjured players. This indicates that NHL players who RTP at the NHL level are likely able to return to their prior level of performance, albeit playing in less games the first season after surgery.