WHL prepared to act

MEDICINE HAT, Alberta – During his time as an athletic therapist in the Western Hockey League, Mikki Lanuk is thankful he has only seen a defibrillator used once – and it wasn’t used to revive a collapsed player.

“I believe it was my second year in Kamloops … we had just gotten our brand new defibrillator, and we had a spectator go down,” said the Medicine Hat Tigers’ athletic therapist, now in his eighth season in the WHL. “The EMTs that were on site borrowed ours to help revive the spectator.”

A defibrillator is a machine that can monitor heart rhythms and deliver an electric shock to restart a heart that has stopped beating. No such machine was on site when 19-year-old Russian hockey player Alexei Cherepanov collapsed and died during a Continental Hockey League game in Moscow, Russia.

Besides the absence of a defibrillator, it has also been determined there was no ambulance on standby for the game.

This type of situation would not happen in the WHL. For at least five years, the league has mandated that all member clubs have defibrillators on site for practices and games. These machines also accompany teams on the road.

“I think as a league we are doing everything possible to provide quality first responder care,” said Lanuk. “If an emergency occurs, we all have the same training, and can help each other protect players, coaches and spectators.”