Ottawa Senators Indirectly Immersed in Concussion Debate
By Ian Smith
While the Ottawa Senators are easing back Clarke MacArthur from a serious concussion, the NHL commissioner isn’t admitting any link between concussions and CTE.
In a letter to Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, Gary Bettman said that there’s not enough evidence to connect head injuries to chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Although he indicated that research will be ongoing, he also adamantly denied that any connections between head trauma and CTE had been demonstrated.
He said that there had been no “causal link between CTE and concussions in team sports generally, much less in NHL hockey.”
This is an odd quote, because he seems to be implying that concussions in any team sport are different from one another.
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Football might produce more concussions than basketball, but a concussion is the same no matter what game is being played.
The “team sports” emphasis also gives the hint of him defending institutions like the NFL and NHL.
This is also a bizarre statement to make because of the numerous football players who’ve tested positive for signs of CTE posthumously.
Deceased NHL players like Steve Montador, Bob Probert, and Derek Boogard all were discovered to show signs of CTE.
It would be a very large coincidence if these numerous former football and hockey players got this disease due to random chance. How many former athletes have to get this degenerative disease caused by head trauma until a connection is admitted? It insults our intelligence.
The NHL is in the middle of a lawsuit regarding this matter. 105 former NHL players have sued the NHL, alleging that the league failed to warn them of risks involved with repeated head trauma.
Knowing the context of the NHL’s predicament makes Bettman’s statement somewhat expected, because admitting a link would hurt the team’s case in court.
His quotes are going to look pretty awful as more and more discoveries are uncovered about this disease.
He just doesn’t want to admit liability, and it’s reminiscent of the Tobacco Lobby arguing that smoking isn’t linked to lung cancer.
Now, whether or not the players should have known the risks of a physical sport like hockey is a whole other debate, but the league looks really bad by denying what’s so obvious to everyone else.
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Hopefully MacArthur doesn’t end up suffering from this debilitating disease. It’s disheartening that the commissioner doesn’t appear to be looking out for his players’ best interests.