NHL To Become No Hitting League? Hockey KO’s Itself with Brain Injuries

Take a look: NHL star Sidney Crosby on the ice following a hit in last year’s Winter Classic!  The NHL is a funny league. Always the outlier of the four (three this year, if  the NBA doesn’t get its act together) major North American sports leagues, some would even deny it the label of ‘major,’ relegating it to soccer and lacrosse status. Every so often the NHL seems poised to break through and take a larger share of the sports market before figuring out a way to guarantee that it avoids such good fortune—whether it’s with a player lockout and canceled season in 2004, moving its regular season network games from ESPN to a network (Versus) that no one knows about, or its ongoing inability to keep its brightest stars in the game due to brain injuries.

 The NHL concussion issue received an unusual amount of attention over the summer when three NHL enforcers died, at least two the result of suicides. The possibility that head injuries, sustained as a result of their role as fighters, contributed to the deaths got a lot of attention, but the problem for the NHL goes well beyond its enforcers and what is likely afflicting these role players.

 All NHL players are at high risk for concussion. The NHL’s biggest star, Sidney Crosby, has not played since January due to several concussions (one of which followed an otherwise innocuous, unpenalized hit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDIzDdiifTg). Crosby’s semi-official moniker of ‘The Next One’ (derived from Wayne Gretzky’s ‘The Great One’ label) is but one indication of how the NHL views him as essential to its broader appeal. He inspires both devotion and loathing (particularly among fans who dislike Crosby’s team, the Penguins), but his play is undeniably electric and exceptional. And he is nowhere to be seen this season, as was true for half of last season.

 The NHL has a problem, and it has been slow to address it. Last year they finally outlawed hits that directly target the head, but didn’t outlaw all head contact as all other hockey leagues (except for some NHL affiliates) have. 14% of NHL concussions result from what are currently legal hits to the head. [http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/14-percent-of-n-h-l-concussions-caused-by-legal-head-shots/] The NHL doesn’t need to become the No Hitting League, but what it is losing by not moving quicker on this far outweighs whatever it gains by not changing the game. NHL fans want to see big hits, but they don’t need to be delivered to the head.

 For at least some time, the NHL concussion rate dropped [http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-nhl-concussions.html], but with the future of the NHL equivalent of Michael Jordan uncertain more needs to be done. Crosby’s concussion may be the most well known, but the oddest may be the one sustained last year (in another legal hit) by the Rangers’ star defenseman Marc Staal, in that it was his brother Eric who delivered the injurious hit (Jordan, the third NHL Staal brother, was not involved). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLdfuky6BRg Marc Staal played only sporadically for the rest of the season, and like Crosby has yet to play this year.

 The traditional hockey answer to all this is advice given to those on the receiving end: ‘Keep your head up and it won’t happen.’ But all NHL players know to keep their heads up, and out of self-preservation do so most of the time. It hasn’t been enough. Just as the NFL quickly instituted new rules to keep quarterbacks healthy when their injuries threatened that league’s success, the NHL needs to do the same for its players. It may be the major sports league in places like Manitoba, but without its brightest stars on the ice it won’t even be part of the major professional sports league discussion elsewhere.

RUFUS DAVIS