So, who's next? It's time to put a stop to head hits
They continue. And they continue.
On Wednesday night it was Jake Evans. Two weeks before it was John Tavares. And there were the others. And the others. Next, who?
Head hits. Whether intentional, careless, or completely accidental, that distinction matters only to the hitter, not to the player hit. Nor even much to the rest of us now. The backstories — it's the sort of thing he would do, or wouldn't do — who cares? It's about Tavares not Corey Perry, Evans not Mark Scheifele.
And we know now. Everybody knows. Not just the scientists.
The media know. Ron MacLean knows. So do Elliotte Friedman and Cassie Campbell, so do Darren Dreger, Craig Simpson, Pierre LeBrun and all the others. They know. George Parros knows, Bill Daly knows, so do all the owners. Jeremy Jacobs, Geoff Molson, Larry Tanenbaum, they all know. Mark Chipman, David Thomson, Murray Edwards, Daryl Katz, Francesco Aquilini, Eugene Melnyk. They all know. Don Fehr, the head of the Players' Association, he knows. Gary Bettman knows. They can't not know, they can't pretend not to know. They know. And we know they know.
The players know. Their wives and girlfriends know. Their kids and parents and friends know.
The gut-wrenching scene after the Tavares and Evans injuries, the two players on the ice, face down, face up. And their teammates. They're paid not to know, to ignore or forget, to keep on going no matter what. Their silence. The incredible echoing, deafening silence in the whole arena. Across the country.
The commentators, they don't know what to say. They know their words have no meaning.
But they say them, quietly, haltingly, respectfully.
And the wait. The doctors, the others, hovering around. The stretcher. The hope. The fear.
And then the final wait. The player strapped down on the stretcher, and … and … the thumbs up! Thank God. He's alive. He might be OK.
And the great Habs-Leafs series, so anticipated for so long, and the end of that first Jets-Canadiens game, so tough, so determinedly played, in an instant, the air in those two big balloons goes rushing, gushing out. Gone.
The air will come back, The players will put it there. Whoever wins the Cup will totally earn it. Their players and fans will go crazy, and we'll watch, and love watching them.
But maybe not quite as much, and that's too bad. For us, and for them.
It doesn't have to be this way. And it's only the beginning of the second round. Two more rounds to go. Who's next?
Get serious.