Eric Lindros had it right. A few months back, when the Hockey Hall of Fame centreman travelled from his Toronto home to Parliament Hill to testify before a committee of MPs studying what might be done about the difficult problem of sports-related concussions, Lindros offered a warning.
Don't even bother attempting to persuade professional sports leagues about the merits of improving policies around concussion prevention and treatment, Lindros said.
"Quite honestly, any time you mix athletics and money, the lines blur," Lindros said.
And so Lindros, or anyone who's been paying attention to the NHL's baffling stance on brain injuries and their scary consequences, couldn't have been surprised to hear NHL commissioner Gary Bettman's predictable testimony before that same committee on Wednesday afternoon in Ottawa. If the optimistic among us held out a smidgen of hope that the passage of time might have brought with it an evolution in Bettman's views on a topic that profoundly affects so many of his players, current and former ... well, the optimists should have listened to realists like Lindros, who's seen a thing or two.
Sure, Bettman has been on the job more than 26 years. He's been an honoured member of the hockey hall since he was inducted last fall. But Wednesday confirmed they didn't put him there because he benevolently served the good of the sport, its players and its future. They gave him the blue blazer and the ring because he profitably grew the business of his employers. And the business of his employers is clearly still served best by concussion denial.
Asked to clarify his position on the link between repetitive brain injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative disease that's been found in the brains of a considerable list of NHL alumni, Bettman announced that his head remains firmly implanted in the sands of shamelessness.
"Based on everything I've been told — and if anybody has any information to the contrary, we'd be happy to hear it — other than some anecdotal evidence, there has not been that conclusive link," Bettman said, speaking of concussions and CTE.
Even the NFL, the original League of Denial, moved off this indefensible position a few years ago. But this is the maddening technicality in which Bettman still chooses to bunker himself. Science, by its ever-evolving nature, is never truly conclusive. It changes with research. It is built to be constantly challenged. That's always been true. But what's also true, and what Bettman continues to disingenuously ignore, is that the best available evidence tells us CTE is caused by repetitive hits to the head. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us CTE "is believed to be caused in part by exposure to repetitive head impacts, including concussions as well as subconcussive trauma." The organization also tells us "the greatest risk factor for CTE is the number of years of exposure to repeated head or brain injuries."
That's why progressives who care about the game have been trying to improve it. But, on Wednesday, Bettman pooh-poohed the suggestion popularized by fellow hall of famer Ken Dryden that the league mandate a zero-tolerance policy on hits to the head.
"Such a rule is very easy to propose. It is difficult if not impossible to implement and apply in practice," Bettman said. "It would not be possible to consistently and fairly enforce a rule that prohibits head contact of any kind or nature if the NHL is to be maintained as a physical, contact sport."
And Bettman, too, reiterated a handful of old arguments the league's grey-haired governors, stuck in the past as they are, have been making for years.
"People believe (fighting is) still an important thermostat," Bettman said, for one.
Great stickler for conclusive scientific evidence that he is, Bettman offered zero research to back up this tired old saw. But why should the commissioner need conclusive evidence to prove his arguments?
If the MPs on the committee were hoping for a productive exchange of ideas from someone who actually cares about the good of the game, they invited the wrong man to the proceedings. What they got instead was Bettman patting his league on the back for being pioneers in baseline testing going back to 1997, never mind that many consider baseline tests ineffective.
As San Jose's Marc-Edouard Vlasic said a couple of seasons ago, dismissing the validity of one of the linchpins of the league's return-to-play protocol: "It's just a written test. In order for me to fail that, I'd have to be in a coma … The baseline cannot show how I'm feeling."
And as for the idea that the world's best league ought to set an example for the way the game is played down to the grassroots, he seemed unconcerned.
"I understand and agree that not everything done at the NHL level should apply to younger, non-professional players," Bettman said. "Our players like the way the NHL game is played and understand the implications of playing a physical contact sport at the highest professional level in the world."
Do they, though? Can any young adult, drafted as a teenager, truly understand the implications of playing a game that so obviously scrambles brains? Can they see ahead to the troubles of Johan Franzen, the 39-year-old former Detroit Red Wing who, in the wake of a career in which he endured multiple brain injuries, has described his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression?
"Sometimes my whole world falls apart and I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel," Franzen told a Swedish newspaper last year.
Can players living their dream envision the day their families donate their bodies to science after they've died before their time? It's a grim experience that's been lived by the kin of former NHLers such as Bob Probert, Rick Martin, Zarley Zalapski and Derek Boogaard, whose brains have tested positive for CTE. Bettman had the gall to come to Ottawa Wednesday and call the NHL "a family," but he couldn't tell you anything about the fates of those particular members, or about the root of the struggles of so many more, inconclusive evidence and all.
As Lindros said: Any time you mix money and sports, the lines blur. Who needs honest discussion and clear-eyed progress when you're happily stuck in the past and blinded by profit?
Entertainment Plaza - TV, Movies, Sports, Music, Soaps
http://almosthuman99.com
Babe Of The Month - Vote Now!
http://almosthuman99.com/polls/babes/babeofthemonth.html
Hunk Of The Month - Vote Now!
http://almosthuman99.com/polls/hunks/hunkofthemonth.html
0 comments:
Post a Comment