NHL should clarify concussion rules
Handling of Crosby situation shows that poorly-written league protocol won’t protect players
Storylines abound for the third round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Can the Penguins repeat? Is Erik Karlsson, in fact, a robot? Will P.K. Subban continue to rub Marc Bergevin’s face in it?
And also this: In what way will the National Hockey League’s concussion protocol be shown to be an utter farce this time?
This isn’t just a Sidney Crosby thing, although the incident with the Penguins captain in Game 6 against Washington was the best example of how the NHL’s concussion rules are a Potemkin village of protocols: tidy on the surface, but a flimsy mess underneath.
Late in Game 6 of Toronto’s loss to the Capitals, Leafs goaltender Frederik Andersen was bumped in the head by the hip of a Washington skater as he passed behind the net. Andersen, who had a head-injury scare at the end of the regular season, bounced back up and finished the third period of what was a tie game.
In the ensuing intermission, the Hockey Night in Canada panel noted the play, and gave specific credit to Andersen for going to his crease immediately and not giving the league’s concussion spotters any reason to believe he was hurt. Even if, you know, he was.
Had Andersen remained prone on the ice, or called for a trainer, or shown any ill effects of the collision, the concussion spotters might have swooped in and pulled him from the game at a critical moment. Everyone agreed that it was clever of him to avoid such an outcome.
No one seemed worried that avoiding the concussion protocol also left open the possibility of an undiagnosed concussion. And no one gave any thought to the idea that Toronto’s medical staff might have intervened on their own, just to be safe. These are the playoffs. Such caution would be madness.
The Crosby incident would show just how hockey’s culture, all these years after the dangers of brain injury have become more fully realized, still errs on the side of the bare minimum the specific rules require.
A quick review: Crosby was concussed in a Game 3 loss, and missed Game 4, but just that one game. That was suspicious enough on its own for someone with Crosby’s concussion history, but it’s possible his symptoms cleared quickly. Concussions are weird.
But in Game 6, he crashed into the boards and rattled his head, then got up slowly. There was general bafflement that Crosby wasn’t removed from the game.
There are six “signs or symptoms” of a concussion, outlined under the seven-page protocol, that warrant mandatory removal from play. One of them is “slow to get up.”
Deputy commissioner Bill Daly told USA Today this week there’s an exception to the slow-to-get-up rule, that it applies only under certain “mechanisms of injury’’ such as: player takes shoulder to head, player’s head hits ice, player is punched in head by an (ungloved) fist. Seriously, that’s what the protocol says. If someone goes head-and-shoulders-first into the boards, as Crosby did, then league spotters cannot intervene. It’s up to team doctors to handle the player as they see fit.
That the protocol exists at all is because teams can’t be trusted to put player safety above team success, so they have written concrete terms that must be followed. And so they are followed to the letter, which is a problem when they’re so narrowly defined.
Oddly, the mechanism-of-injury stuff only applies to players who are slow to get up or who, in the protocol’s phrasing, “clutches his head.” Other possible head-injury signs like a having a vacant look or lying motionless on the ice warrant mandatory removal after a blow to the head, full stop.
But if he does so after an elbow to the head, or a stick to the face? Then it’s up to the team to treat him and he doesn’t have to miss a shift.
So the NHL prevents its independent concussion spotters from taking action except in certain circumstances. Zero tolerance it is not.
Consider this, under the “clutches his head” section of the protocol: “The clutching must be immediate and related to the blow.”
So if the spotter notices a player on the bench holding his head in his hands, 10 minutes after taking a shoulder to the helmet, they have no cause to intervene. Nor does the policy allow spotters leeway in the case of a player with a concussion history. They’re only to act based on what they observe.
If the explanation for what didn’t happen with Crosby is that they followed the rules, then the rules are poorly written. Which is apparent enough, when reading them.