My question is I am under the assumption that getting a sixth year because of an injury is difficult (such as Royston), but that getting a fifth year (as in in Kirkwood) is pretty automatic.
Am I totally wrong on this?
You're confusing different rules. A medical hardship waiver deals with injuries or illnesses that render a player incapable of competition after the player has already competed in a particular season. A hardship waiver provides a player with an additional year of competition.
Student-athletes are generally given four seasons of competition in a sport. A hardship waiver gives them an additional year to complete.
Student-athletes are also generally under a five-year clock under which to compete in those four seasons. The clock starts when a student enrolls full time (i.e., beginning of their [academic] freshman year of college). A waiver of the five-year rule grants another year of time in which to use the competition years available to the student-athlete.
In Kirkwood's case, he was a true freshman. As he was granted a hardship waiver, starting with 2011-12, he had four years on his clock remaining to compete in four additional seasons. The waiver was most certainly not automatic, but his five-year clock did not need to be addressed.
In Royston's case, he needed a waiver of the five-year rule as his clock had run out. An additional year on the five-year clock can be requested only after the five years have transpired. This waiver was not automatic either, but the waiver requested was quite different than Kirkwood's.
I believe Troy has never redshirted. In other words, this is his fourth season of competition and the fourth year on his clock. So, he has one more year on his five-year clock and may be a candidate for a hardship waiver which would allow him to compete for a fifth season in 2012-13 which would also be his fifth year on the five-year clock.
If he has played in only four games (played in a game means being in the game even for one second, but if I recall correctly he's not played at all since NDSU so he'd be at four), the key for Stoudermire being granted a medical hardship waiver is that he must be incapable of playing the rest of this season. It is not a team or player choice. The determination of him being incapable of competition for the rest of the year must be supported by the physicians in order to be considered by the conference. Kill & crew cannot simply decide to "save him for next year". It's now a medical question. If the docs were to deem him to be unable to play through the remainder of the season, there would appear to be an outstanding chance that he'd be granted a fifth year of competition.
In my article on the injury situation of Gopher basketball center Maurice Walker, I included a football calculation example on one unique piece of the requirements of a hardship waiver as I thought a question like this was likely to arise at some point.
You can find that article HERE on GopherHole. 
