Ensuring the well-being of players on and off the ice is a collective effort and takes a truly dedicated team.
At the heart of the Vancouver Canucks’ training regimen, Surrey Fire Captain Derek Salisbury blends his roles as a firefighter and paramedic -- weaving a lifeline of emergency preparedness that extends beyond the flames and onto the rink.
Salisbury works with the Canucks’ training staff and physicians through emergency scenarios they hope to never have to use but are prepared for should the moment arise. Every NHL team has a liaison that helps teams with what they call “pre-hospital” medicine. Salisbury is a firefighter and paramedic – only a handful of people in the province have both disciplines under their belt.
He loves working with the organization and relates the work the Canucks’ training staff does to his line of work. They are paramedics in treatments they provide for the players and firefighters because they’re at the ready behind the bench during a game.
"The Canucks’ training staff are responsible for providing the highest level of care for not just the players, but everyone involved with the team, and it’s an honour to be part of that,” Salisbury said.
“I want to give back to the Canucks themselves and to the organization, to make sure everyone can make it home safely to their families.”
Born and raised in Chemainus, B.C., he began his trade as a junior firefighter at 16 years old. The local fire chief made a recruiting visit to his high school putting the call out for firefighters.
Salisbury has been with the Vancouver Canucks and AHL affiliate since 2016. He trains both clubs once a month, from August until the end of the season, to teach emergency response skills that help treat trauma on the ice so the athlete can be transferred to the care of the team physicians once they’re off the ice.
He pulls from his work experience to create a training plan that encompasses making quick decisions, delegating in high pressure situations, while making sure everyone around the incident is kept safe as well. The training team gets a lot of reps in, setting aside practice times to keep the procedures second nature.
“It's my responsibility to look at all of those variables and then build a training plan around that so that they're comfortable enough to respond to everything,” Salisbury said. “It's kind of like being a captain on the job. My job at the fire department is to do risk assessment. I went from a cardiac last night to dealing with a river running down the road after a manhole cover popped off because the storm drain was full, to a car accident, to a woman labour and everything in between.”
As part of his role with the Canucks, he is part of the Professional Hockey Athletic Trainers Society (PHATS) and part of their mandate as a group is to ensure all teams are using best practices for techniques, and scientific data relating to the prevention and care of hockey injuries. Information is shared between all NHL and AHL clubs and through conferences they share it down to the collegiate level.
Salisbury has presented at conferences held by PHATS, along with the Canucks’ emergency physician representative.
“We get in there and talk about the incidents, we teach, discuss the equipment we use. We had 119 teams in Phoenix last year which includes professional organizations to college hockey,” he said.
Vancouver Canucks Head Athletic Therapist, Roman Kaszczij, says both Vancouver and Abbotsford place a heavy emphasis on emergency preparedness and Salisbury is an integral part of the training and medical staff to provide aid to players.
“It's great to have Derek as a sounding board and someone that’s part of the team. He’s also a really great guy,” Kaszczij said. “He’s always touching base. Every time we have to go on the ice and respond to an injury he reaches out to chat about our processes. We practice every month to help make these situations go as smooth as possible. His efforts improve our quality of care we provide to our guys.”
Recently the training staff and emergency medical team have focused on cuts where there can be significant blood loss. Salisbury says simply putting pressure on the source in some instances won’t fix the problem, so the trainer has to find the source of the bleed with their finger and pack the wound with gauze to stop the internal bleeding.
“The head trainer will get out there, show his hand or fist in the air to signal to the rest of the team, start cutting the player’s clothing to get a look at the wound and if it's gushing blood, basically clamp, pack, get them off, and then the player will go straight to a team physician,” he said.
Salisbury is also the owner of Firemedix Fire Academy, a training program for people looking to become firefighters, and it also satisfies his passion for teaching. He feels it’s a privilege to give back to the next generation of people coming into the fire service. His school also teaches and can grant Emergency Medical Assistants (EMA) licensing, a license granted to individuals by the province to practice pre-hospital medicine.
He’s been focused on giving back and educating others throughout his career and his role with the Canucks is just a continuation of that.
“I think it's pretty cool what I get to do I think I'm the luckiest man in the entire world to have the opportunity to do what I do,” Salisbury said. “I like staying in the background and helping the boys and being that support system behind the guys who get out there and make the difference.”
