Head Games
"The first testicular guard "Cup" was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974.
It took 100 years for men to realize that the brain is also important."
This tidbit was in my inbox this morning from Jill, it happens to pertain to what I was already gonna write about.
The other day The Fifth Element Estate on CBC aired a piece on how the average lifespan for Canadian Football League players who have suffered multiple concussions is 20 years less than that of the population. I was given the link to the video from reader/friend bkblades since he's in Canada and I'm not (one month!!). It's not able to be embedded so click here to watch. It's worth the 20 minutes.
The story centers around 3 CFL players from the 1970s Edmonton Eskimos team, all with multiple concussions, all dead in their 50s. Doctors in West Virginia have studied their brains and found that they have the brains of men in their 80s or 90s, with signs of severe dementia.
Once their playing careers were over these men faced all sorts of problems--marriage failures, business failures, severe depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and suicide.
Why am I blabbing about this on a hockey blog? Because hockey players are also succeptable to multiple concussions. It's no secret that once a player has had one, the rest come much easier. There's been many studies that say that.
Hockey, like football, is an inherently dangerous and violent sport. Players know they're taking a risk every time they step on the ice. It could be argued that they get paid so much because part of it is "hazard pay." But the league and the NHLPA have got to figure out a way to get hits to the head out of the game. Blatant hits to the head, intentional ones.
I'm not one of those people saying get rid of fighting, make hockey a non-contact sport, make the players play inside giant plastic bubbles blah blah blah. I'm also no Don Cherry who would, if it was up to him, let guys out there without helmets at all or crap like that. There needs to be some measure of protection for the players besides a hard plastic helmet that doesn't really provide a whole lot of real protection.
Yes, this would add just another rule that would be open to interpretation by on-ice officials. And I know guys are still gonna get concussions. If you watch the CBC report one of the statistics mentioned is that in the CFL 4-out-of-5 concussions aren't reported. It's a man's sport, it wouldn't be macho to say your head hurts, you wanna play the game. These guys are getting paid to do what they love the most. To be unable to do that has got to be frustrating and I can see where some guys would find it emasculating if they were unable to play because they had a headache. And how difficult might it be for retired players to admit they're suffering depression. I get it. I get that attitude, that line of thinking. But it doesn't make it right. I imagine there are many unreported concussions in the NHL also.
For my readers, for me, this issue is especially relevant because we watch junior hockey. We see kids ages 16-20 getting concussions. If they are fortunate to move on to upper leagues beyond Major Junior, they are continuing in a sport that makes them prone to more concussions. Their brains are being irrepairably damaged at such a young age.
Guys like Boston Bruins' Patrice Bergeron, who lost a year of his career because of a concussion and post-concussion symptoms, I wonder what his brain looks like. He's 23 years old.
Are concussions going to happen even if hits to the head are policed and removed from the game? Certainly. It happens. You can't have a high-speed, high adrenaline, full-contact game like hockey without the risk of injury. Injuries can happen even without contact, look at Jason Gardiner's broken leg--his skate got caught in a rut in the ice and twisted his leg so weird it broke. But there needs to be action taken from the top down, starting with the NHL to protect the players that makes it possible for an NHL to exist. In addition, the league needs to provide medical/psychological assistance to players after they've retired. Much like the military should provide help for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (and they do a terrible job at it, woefully underfunded, doing a complete disservice to those who have fought for this country, but that's another rant for another day, another blog).
At the junior level, measures should also be taken to eliminate hits to the head. Many of these kids are not going to the next level of hockey, that's the reality. They need to be able to survive after junior hockey, with their brains not being scrambled eggs. Many junior players go on to university, but as someone who understand the education field, I have to wonder if their grades would be better if they had never suffered concussion.
And yes, it's easy for me as silly junior hockey fan sitting here to say "they should do this, they should do that". It's made even more difficult because there is no WHLPA to represent the junior players. But that is also another rant for another day. It's just that watching that piece from The Fifth Estate was fascinating so I felt the need to post it here and add my 2 cents. Back to regularly scheduled Reader's Challenge tomorrow.
