March is National Athletic Training Month so this week we are joined by the magicians who keep the Bulldogs men’s and women’s hockey teams in one piece throughout the season. 

Dr. Susan Hoppe, the Bulldogs’ Director of Hockey Sports Performance, has been with the Bulldogs for 17 years, and athletic trainer Alyssa Irby is in her first year with the UMD women’s hockey team.

Hoppe and Irby share what they do, what the most common hockey injuries are, and why they don’t set timelines on injuries. Hoppe also shares a list of extracurricular activities that she’d like to ban, like snowboarding on game day.

At the end, we try to teach Matt and Zach where their LCL is with a little anatomy quiz. Let’s just say they learned more about AC separations and subungual hematomas than they did before taking the test.