BODYCHECKING BAN WOULD BE BAD FINANCIAL MOVE FOR NHL
League would lose one of its biggest legal arguments if it eliminates physical contact
There’s a box in my basement that contains old VHS tapes of sports bloopers. This was how you had to watch such things, kids, before PVRS and Youtube. It was a simpler time.
One of them is called Hockey’s Hardest Hitters and although it’s probably 20 years old it feels like an utter relic. In the clips in which various players are rendered unconscious by shots to the head, crowds cheer wildly and announcers react with glee. In some instances, a blind-side blow to the head leads to a fight, a tidy encapsulation of several actions that were once routine during an NHL game and are now subject to severe sanction.
For a long time, these moments were one of hockey’s great selling features. As much as the league has changed its attitude to such things in recent years, physical play is still a significant part of the game. Watch any commercial for live hockey and it is bound to include a shot of someone crashing into the boards.
This is what the idea of eliminating bodychecking from the game will run up against: decades of play in which contact between opponents has been an intrinsic part of the sport.
That’s not to say those talking about the removal of hitting do not have a point. Ken Dryden and Eric Lindros broached the idea of non-contact hockey at a concussion symposium in London, Ont. Dryden noted all the work that has gone into treating head injuries is not as effective as avoiding them altogether.
“The problem is science takes time and the games are being played tomorrow,” Dryden said.
This matches what neurologists have been saying about blows to the head for years: As much as there is uncertainty in the science about the specific risks of long-term brain injury from contact sports, the only certain way to reduce that risk is to not suffer blows to the head.
So if hockey leagues want to reduce the concussion risk as much as they can, the solution is to ban the bodycheck.
It is, obviously, a drastic move. And while the NHL will be unlikely to consider it for a host of business reasons — its executives often say physical play is a significant part of the sport’s attraction — I think it will stay away from considering such a change for legal reasons, too.
Last month, a Minnesota court denied class-action status to a lawsuit from former players that accuses the NHL of negligence for failing to protect them from the long-term effects of head injuries. That decision, which comes almost five years after the initial complaint was filed, doesn’t put an end to the NHL’S concussion-lawsuit problem, but it means the dozens of players who were part of the potential class-action could pursue individual claims. (The judge did not rule on the merit of the claims, but said major differences in state laws would have made a single class action untenable.) And it means the arguments made by both sides in the Minnesota courtroom will likely be revisited in a number of jurisdictions.
The NHL has used many legal arguments in its defence against the would-be class action, but a theme is the league’s insistence that it has always put a priority on player safety. As brain-injury awareness grew, the league responded in kind by cracking down on headshots and instituting concussion protocols.
Three years ago, in her written reasons for denying the NHL’S motion to dismiss the complaint in the class-action proceeding, Minnesota judge Susan Richard Nelson included a quote from NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly that stands as a decent summation of the league’s position: The NHL is “completely satisfied with the responsible manner in which the league and the players’ association have managed player safety over time, including with respect to head injuries and concussions.”
Whatever one thinks of the accuracy of that statement, it would be hard to reconcile with a league that suddenly decides to remove body contact in the interests of player safety. Even as concussions grew into a full crisis with the suicide deaths of several former players, the NHL has for years been telling players and fans that rule changes have made the game more safe. A move to eliminate body contact would be an admission that the game is still not safe enough.
That is essentially the point no-contact advocates are making: the only way to completely remove dangerous collisions is to remove all collisions.
The NHL, when it faces the potential of dozens of claims from former players who argue that it didn’t take their safety seriously enough, does not seem like it is in a position to agree.
The problem is science takes time and the games are being played tomorrow.