> Last Saturday night, while most of us were watching the Northern
> Michigan/Boston Univ. game there was another championship game
> being played.  In Manchester, NH the Youth Hockey Bantam League
> championship game was played.  In that game, 15-year-old Kevin
> Charbonneau was fatally injured as he slid into a slapshot
> fired from just 5 feet away.  An autopsy showed that the puck
> bruised Charbonneau's heart, caused it to beat irregularly and
> set off a heart attack.  The puck struck him directly in the
> heart.  When the coaches got to him on the ice, he was concious
> and was complaining that he couldn't catch his breath.
> Charbonneau was pronounced DOA at Manchester's Catholic Medical
> CCenter.
>
> Hearing something like this just made me stop and realize how
> quickly our lives can change.
 
     How tragic.  Last year a similar incident occurred in a Wisconsin
     high school(Middleton HS) game.  A player slid to block a slapshot
     and somehow the puck hit just below the chest pads and he died.
     At the time the media and coaches said they had never heard of anyone
     dying in this manner.
 
---the mg