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Q: Hockey players and organizations are famously tight-lipped about injuries during the playoffs. But it seems as if their secrecy is now becoming the norm throughout the regular season. Am I off-base, or have you noticed this? If so, why do you think this is the case? Are players now convinced that revealing an injury means that you're just letting opponents know where to direct their hits?

Mike Giunta, Glenshaw

MOLINARI: Q&A readers pull off a surprise every now and then, and the wave of questions about this issue that's come in during the past few days -- emanating from points across North America, no less -- is one of them. Many league and team officials contend that interest in the precise nature and severity of injuries is limited to members of the media, that fans, be they readers, viewers, listeners or all of the above, really don't care about anything except whether a guy is playing. And, if he isn't, when he will.

That mentality was evident in the injury-reporting guidelines handed down by the league about a year ago, which say that teams are not compelled to provide any information about an injury other than whether the player in question is likely to return to the game in which he was injured. Beyond that, the NHL figures, what's going on with a player's health is of no concern to the people whose money keeps the league running.

Most team executives embraced that policy because they feel, correctly or otherwise, that full and honest disclosure of injury information would put their clubs at a competitive disadvantage. Never mind that that doesn't seem to be an issue in the NFL, where all teams are required to make such information public, and face league sanctions if they fail to do so.

A few NHL teams actually do let people know what is going on with their players, some still adhere to the utterly worthless "lower-body" and "upper-body" designations and many, if not most, refuse to provide a syllable beyond the token information mandated by the league.

The Penguins' handling of Tyler Kennedy's recent injury is a good example. Team officials steadfastly refused to discuss the nature of his problem, although at least some reporters suspected that it was a musculature problem in his upper leg. (Reporting any information when one is not certain of its accuracy is risky business, though, and something most responsible media people know to avoid. The upside of being correct is far outweighed by the negatives associated with being wrong.)

The difference between the Kennedy injury and the strained shoulder that has sidelined Evgeni Malkin is that a Post-Gazette reporter became aware that Malkin had a shoulder issue a few days before his injury was diagnosed and announced. The Penguins knew the reporter had that information, and would have gone public with it as soon as Malkin missed a game because of it. Consequently, the team had nothing to gain by suppressing the details of his injury, and included them in the announcement that he would be out for a couple of weeks.

As a rule, many, if not most, NHL reporters do not disseminate injury information if the problem does not result in the player missing work time, or have an obvious impact on his performance. (If a reporter knows that a guy has a fractured leg and he's not getting around the ice very well, there's no reason that readers, viewers or listeners shouldn't be told why that is happening, even if the team refuses to do so.)

Lots of players have nagging, but relatively minor, injuries at any point in the season. If they continue to play, making those issues public actually might put a team at a competitive disadvantage, because opponents could target a particular body part that's been damaged for special abuse. Slashing a guy's sore wrist, for example.

However, when a player doesn't participate in a game because of an injury, the belief here is that the people who buy tickets are entitled to know why, whether that player is a superstar or a slug. And based on submissions to the Q&A over the past few days, a lot of those ticket-buyers seem to feel the same way.

For what it's worth, a high-ranking Penguins official has said several times since the NHL enacted its current non-disclosure policy that he would have no problem with making all injury-related information public and probably would prefer that to the set-up now in place, but doesn't want his club to have the aforementioned competitive disadvantage.

What all of this overlooks is that guys on opposing teams -- many of whom were teammates at some point in their careers -- often talk, which means that while fans might be kept in the dark about what's wrong with a particular player, opponents against whom he will be playing at some point often know all about his medical issue. Frankly, there are times when the most accurate, detailed injury report a media member can get comes from inside the other team's locker room.

Penguins Plus, a blog by Dave Molinari and Shelly Anderson, is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.