Time for Mr. Bettman to stop blindly dismissing effects of concussions
Gary Bettman thinks the problem he has is with those who think he has a problem. The problem he has is brain injuries in the NHL. He’s managing the wrong problem. He’s fighting the wrong fight.
A few weeks ago, commissioner Bettman testified at a parliamentary subcommittee on concussions in sports.
He said hockey is a game “played in an enclosed environment, at high speeds, by players of different heights, weights and skills” and is, by its nature, “a collision sport.”
The health and safety of the players is a “top priority” and the league has “pioneered” many safety initiatives, including a concussion protocol to identify and evaluate potentially injured players and remove them from the game and to diagnose and manage a player’s injury and his return to play.
To reduce the number of concussions, he cited the introduction of Rule 4, which, in his words, “prohibits all hits to an opponent’s head where the head was the main point of contact and such contact was avoidable.”
To those who suggest all hits to the head should be penalized, he is dismissive.
“Such a rule is very easy to propose, but is difficult, if not impossible, to implement and apply in practice … if the NHL is to be maintained as a physical contact sport.”
Rule 48, he says, “strikes the correct balance for NHL hockey.”
The result of all these actions, he said: concussions have been reduced significantly; fighting is at its lowest level since 1964; 85 per cent of the league’s games are now fight free; about 75 or 76 per cent of the NHL’S 700 players “never engage in a fight” and for many who do “maybe it’s one fight a season.”
Here’s where his case goes wrong — most of the league’s actions kick in after the brain injury has occurred.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy and blows to the head? No “conclusive link” has been established, Bettman said.
What about the NFL admitting such a link?
“A vice-president who is neither a doctor or a scientist made a comment and … one or two NFL owners disputed the statement, so I don’t know what the NFL’S position is.”
Further, he cited Dr. Ann Mckee, head of the highly respected Boston University CTE Center, as scientific support.
“(She) told me ... hockey and football are not the same. We don’t have the repetitive head contact and impact that some of the other sports do.”
Two days later, after hearing of his testimony, Dr. Mckee issued the following statement:
“Mr. Bettman misrepresented our 2012 conversation. Our research … clearly shows that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is associated with ice hockey play. We have found CTE in every former NHL player we have examined and we have also found it in amateur hockey players, some of whom had no significant fighting exposure.”
Fighting is down, Bettman said, yet here, too, he has a problem.
If fighting and the threat of fighting at “an important moment” serve as an “important thermostat” to keep players from engaging in much more dangerous alternatives, why is it down?
Why aren’t there fights every game? Isn’t every game emotional? Why do only 24 or 25 per cent of the players fight and many of them only once a season?
Do Sidney Crosby, Connor Mcdavid and the vast majority of the league’s stars and nonstars not have “emotional” moments? Did Bobby Orr, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux not care?
Head hits are inevitable, Bettman said, because of the height differences between players.
Yet there have always been shorter and taller players. Head hits will happen, just as tripping and slashing happen.
But they can occur much less often and, when they do, more severe penalties can be imposed.
Hockey is compellingly physical. That will not change and that is great. But do damage to a brain and the rest of the body doesn’t work so well. High skills become lesser skills. A fan might not even notice this happening because as great stars come off the ice, great new stars jump over the boards to replace them.
Except this isn’t about shorter shifts in a game, this is about shorter careers. Magic in. Magic out. Lives changing on the fly.
Today’s game features jaw-dropping skills.
Let that happen.
Don’t allow the few — players, advisers, decision-makers — to stand in the way of the vast majority and of the game itself.
As a last question, Bettman was asked, “What would you do … if you had carte blanche to make any changes to the game right now … to reduce the number of head injuries?”
His answer: “I like the way the game is being played right now … I don’t believe there’s much we could do.”
He knows that Gary Bettman, the lawyer, questioning Gary Bettman, the commissioner, would rip him apart.
He has been the NHL’S commissioner for 26 years. The consequences of brain injuries in hockey have been clear for at least the last 10 years.
Ten years of wilful blindness, 10 years of drinking your own Kool-aid, 10 years of ragging the puck, of managing and not doing are enough.