I’M HAPPY TO HAVE THE GAME ADVANCE IN SOME WAY.

“I think it’s a noble goal,” he says. “Given the nature of our sport, it would require a radical revision to the way the sport is played today. And when you’ve got essentially 10 skaters, add a couple of goaltenders to further take up some of the space on the surface, flying at a really rapid rate of speed ... I don’t know that it’s a goal you’re ever going to achieve.

“I think there’s still a place in the game for (fighting); I really do. It’s an extra measure of accountability beyond the rules, and beyond supplemental discipline. If there are physical players on your team that the other side knows will hold them accountable for acting up and taking liberties with their smaller, skilled players ... my experience, having operated in that culture, is that you’ll discourage those people from taking liberties. So to me, in this big quiver of arrows we have in our arsenal to discourage head trauma and delivered blows to the head, I think that’s one worth keeping. I really do.”

Grimson says the majority of hockey head trauma comes not from fights, but from high-speed contact. If he had to do it over, given what we know now, he’d change just one thing: The way he handles and reports his symptoms. He’d be quicker and more honest about how he’s feeling.

“I wasn’t always as forthcoming as I needed to be,” he says. “I’m sure that contributed to the way the game unravelled for me.”

Grimson left hockey after concussion symptoms that just wouldn’t go away. A 2001 fight with Sandy McCarthy was his last; the symptoms hit him on the flight home and it dragged on more than a year. In his 20s, concussions gave him “a glassy, almost dizzy sensation.” By his mid-30s, nausea stepped into his life; his body felt heavy; headaches were frequent.

At its worst, light was an enemy; he couldn’t stand on his feet for long stretches; conversations in crowded rooms were difficult.

“It was off-putting; a hard and really awkward time,” he says, but it was also extremely difficult to explain. Nobody can peer into your cranium and see a cracked brain, the way they can ogle a cracked bone.

Grimson — who finished with 39 points and 2,113 penalty minutes in 729 NHL games — found a post-hockey landing spot. The eloquent brawler got his law degree, is a practising lawyer, and works as a colour analyst on Nashville Predators games.

He nods when asked if he’d play the same style today, knowing what he knows, as long as he’s more aware of what to do when things go fuzzy at the rink.

“Exactly,” he said. “I think that’s fair to say. I really feel that way.”