Suivi longitudinal de la charge externe de joueurs professionnels de hockey sur glace au cours d’une saison
For a typical team of the American Hockey League (AHL), the season has 76 matches spread over 28 weeks in which teams compete for a place in the playoffs. In addition to matches, players have to participate in on- and off-ice training sessions to maintain/build hockey-specific skills and fitness. The current thesis had the following purposes: (1) to draw a portrait of the physical demands place on the player and to better understand the evolution and changes that have occurred in modern ice hockey (2) to describe the impact of these changes as they relate to the position of the player (3) to detail the different methods of external load monitoring that are used in other sports such as soccer, rugby and Australian football and expose the challenges associated with employing them with a professional ice hockey team (4) to track the external load of a professional hockey team, through the use of accelerometers, to better understand its evolution during the season. Fifty players, who at one time or another were part of an American Hockey League team during the 2017-18 AHL season, participated in a study on external load monitoring. Using accelerometers, data from each training session and matches during the season were collected and analyzed. Results revealed that the intensity and the training load differed according to the position of the player during the matches and the trainings sessions preceding a match. These results raised the importance of carefully monitoring external load although the used of accelerometers seemed to present great potential for individualized monitoring of the player’s external load throughout a hockey season.
Professional sport External load Accelerometry On-ice load