Thrashers' cuts: Glue them or stitch them?

“Can you glue it?” he asked.

In some cases, glue can be used to close cuts that once would have required stitches. Depending on the location and depth of the cut, hockey players are often opting for a more elementary form of treatment.

“I didn’t want to have stitches because I really don’t like needles that much,” Armstrong said. “I saved myself a bunch of pain and anxiety.”

Armstrong estimates the cut would have required four stitches to close. He’ll still have a scar -– and he'll be missing a chunk of his eyebrow for a while -– but Armstrong returned to the ice without sutures.

“It’s a physician’s call,” Thrashers head athletic trainer Tommy Alva said. “Anything around the face, you’ll get a lot better result if suturing is involved, but at the same time some lacerations that we have you’re not going to get a suture in that thing. It’s not that deep.

“[In Armstrong’s case] it wasn’t that deep and it probably would have been more painful for him to get the numbing medicine and the suturing versus the glue.”

During a recent practice, Thrashers defenseman Tobias Enstrom left the ice with a cut on his chin. Moments later he was in the locker room without so much as a bandage on the injury. Thanks to a little glue.

Doctors have used polymers to close wounds for many years, but polymer chemistry has advanced to the point that glues are not only used to close cuts and surgical incisions. They also may aid in the healing of broken bones, hernias and even brain aneurysms.

One such glue, Dermabond, was the “official wound closure product” of the 2008 U.S. Olympic team.

Alva said the product he carries is very much like Super Glue.

“Some people have a fear of needles,” he said. “They don’t like them. With sutures, numbing it up is the worst part. After that, it’s fine because you’re not going to feel anything. Numbing it up is the most difficult part."

Alva said the use of glue to treat a laceration also depends on its direction and location. A vertical cut almost always warrants stitches. Glue also may not hold well in an area that bends or flexes often. Cuts to the fingers, much like paper cuts, will be treated with glue.

After a week, with the wound healed, the glue falls off on its own. However, as in the case of Armstrong’s eyebrow, it might need a little help. Hence the missing chunk of hair.

“It will grow back,” Armstrong said. “… I’m thankful for it. I like it way better. Some other guys might not. Some guys like to get the stitches for the babes, you know. I like saving myself the pain and the needles.”

Note: The Thrashers re-assigned forward Jason Krog to their AHL affiliate in Chicago on Sunday. Krog was a healthy scratch in two games with the Thrashers since being recalled following the injury to Ilya Kovalchuk.