Plenty of people go to pro hockey games for the fights. But even kids at the local rink are at risk of injury, with all those sticks, skate blades, and 100 mph pucks flying around. Researchers at the Columbus Children's Research Institute in Ohio looked at the patterns of injuries in ice hockey.

What the researchers wanted to know: What injuries happen in ice hockey?

What they did: They used a database run by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that collects information on sports-related injuries from 98 hospitals that are chosen to represent the country. For this study, they counted all ice hockey-related injuries treated in emergency departments in 2001 and 2002.

What they found: More than half of the 32,750 people with ice hockey injuries were under 18, most ages 12 to 17. Injuries to the shoulders, arms, and hands accounted for 44 percent of youth injuries, while 16 percent were head injuries. Scrapes and bruises accounted for the most injuries in young players, followed by fractures and cuts.

What the study means to you: Adolescents seem to get a lot of injuries; players and coaches might be able to use this to think about avoiding injuries.

Caveats: This doesn't tell you anything about injury rates—for example, 97 percent of the injuries were in white people. That could mean that white ice hockey players are darned unlucky, but it's more likely that white players and nonwhite players are about equally likely to get injured and that about 97 percent of ice hockey players are white.

Find out more: The American Academy of Pediatrics has a policy statement on safety in youth hockey.

Read the article: Hostetler, S.G., et al. "Characteristics of Ice Hockey-Related Injuries Treated in U.S. Emergency Departments, 2001–2002." Pediatrics. December 2004, Vol. 114, No. 6, pp. e661–e666.

Abstract online: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org