‘It just makes you feel sad, that he was living with this’
Posthumous CTE diagnosis adds layer of hurt to former NHL player’s family
To the family of former NHL player Jeff Parker, the posthumous diagnosis of CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, was the predictable conclusion. All those hits to the head, including that final one that knocked him out of the game altogether, and all those subsequent years of struggle? In the final, difficult years before Parker’s death in September at age 53, the family figured that it must be CTE.
“It just makes me sad,” John Parker, Jeff ’s younger brother, said through tears. “It doesn’t bring him back. It just makes you feel sad, that he was living with this, and it’s a thing. It’s a real thing.”
To the NHL and its commissioner, Gary Bettman, the diagnosis is likely to be the latest piece of evidence to dismiss or combat. Even as links build a chain bridging the sport to CTE, the degenerative brain disease associated with repetitive head trauma, and some of the game’s most-revered names push the league to take a more open-minded approach, the NHL has denied any connection between long-term brain damage and hits to the head.
The NFL did the same, for many years, until the evidence became too overwhelming, the numbers too much to counter with plausible deniability. Facing a huge class-action lawsuit, the NFL eventually admitted to the connection and agreed to a roughly $1 billion settlement with former players. (That has not kept the sides from continuing to fight over the payouts, amid accusations of fraud and intimidation.)
The NHL, following the NFL’s strategy of about a decade ago, still contests any role in the burgeoning science of CTE, in the courts of law and of public opinion.
Besides Parker, at least six other NHL players have been found to have had CTE: Reggie Fleming, Rick Martin, Bob Probert, Derek Boogaard, Larry Zeidel and Steve Montador.
Parker’s disease was classified as Stage 3 out of four stages of CTE, according to the scale used by researchers at the Boston University CTE Center.
“It was fairly advanced, and we called it Stage 3 because it was significant,” said Dr. Ann McKee, chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and professor at Boston University’s School of Medicine, where she is director of the CTE Center.
The NHL did not respond to requests for comment last week.
Hockey is the team sport with the second-most known cases of CTE, lagging far behind football, where the numbers have surpassed 100. (There have been more boxers and military members diagnosed, too.) But the sample size is small. That is something researchers hope to change by encouraging more hockey players to donate their brains.
The longtime NHL veteran Daniel Carcillo, now retired, recently announced that he would donate his brain, joining a growing list of hockey players that includes Hayley Wickenheiser and Andrea Ruggiero, Olympic gold medalists who made the pledge this year.
Parker made no plans for a brain donation before he died from an infection related to a catheter that
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treated pulmonary hypertension. The subject was raised with family members just moments before Parker was to be cremated in Minnesota.
“It’s hard to make the decision at the time because you’re grieving so hard,” John Parker said. “Once my mom gave the half-OK, we made the call.”
The CTE results, recently given to the family, confirmed suspicions.
“He was fighting through more than we knew, probably,” John Parker said. “More than we could see. And he was persevering the best way he could.”
Parker was a high school star in Minnesota, a national champion at Michigan State and a gritty professional who played all or parts of five seasons in the NHL, ending when he was knocked out with a hit in 1991 while playing for the Hartford Whalers. It was barely noted.
His athletic rise and eventual postcareer struggles followed a now-familiar arc among many later found to have had CTE — relative fame and fortune fading into an erratic postcareer life overcome by symptoms associated with brain injuries.
“There was a change in that lighthearted kid who left White Bear Lake and the one who came back from the NHL,” Scott Parker, Jeff ’s older brother, said.