Getting in front of concussions / CTE

[marka 518]

Howdy,

My wife saw this and forwarded me the article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/sports/hockey/nhl-chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy-cte-juliet-macur.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Not the kind of press you want to see.  I really hope the NHL can get in front of this the right way, learn some lessons from what the NFL has gone through, etc.

Mark

[Vet88 673]

To quote the very brilliant doctor who discovered and named CTE:

"Anybody still denying the disease is out of his mind," - Dr Bennett Omalu, 2009

[Kgbeast 195]

The articles like that are a bit one sided. Tobacco industry and NHL are comparable only in the way they approach the lawsuit. Lawyers task is to reduce or eliminate liability of NHL in this matter. If it requires denial of law of gravity, they will go there and they will instruct NHL to go there. This however does not mean that they or NHL do not believe in gravity. As far as the actual accepting of CTE existence and doing something about it, NHL (unlike tobacco industry) making very significant steps in improving players safety, especially as it concerns head and brain trauma. Now saying that NHL must pay monetary compensations to all CTE patients that have played hockey professionally has little to do with fairness. Note that CTE is caused by sport itself, not by a league or association formed around it. How would you find if an ex-NHL CTE patient would get awarded million dollars in damages, while someone who played hockey from childhood through collage, but did not make pro, now suffering from CTE gets nothing? I am sure there are such cases, no?

[SCBlueLiner 19]

"Note that CTE is caused by sport itself"

 

This claim hasn't even been verified.  There have been cases of CTE found in people who have never played sports.

I have a friend who is involved in the NFLPA and had a long, off the record, conversation with him last weekend.  It was very revealing as there is a lot more going on behind the scenes that the public does not know about.