The hottest topic in the NHL right now is concussions. They occur in almost every single sport, but the contact nature of hockey and football makes the discussion all the more prevalent. Any time it gets brought up in a league atmosphere, it almost always gets hushed and thrown under the rug. Imagine to everyone’s surprise when one of the longest tenured players in the game, Willie Mitchell, decided to discuss his feelings on concussions and the NHL.
Here are some of the quotes he had in an article on Sportsnet:
“The league needs to do a better job. Guys need protection.”
“There’s a concern with players. Guys are worried about it. Guys talk about it – the league isn’t doing enough to protect the players. A couple of years back, a 20-game suspension was a message. You’d be missing games, you get a big chunk of money taken from your pocket – a quarter of your (annual) salary gone. Those suspensions had gotten the game safer – still physical, still fast. Shanny (Brendan Shanahan, then the league’s chief disciplinarian) did a great job. But it’s not like that now.”
Yikes. I don’t think this will go over very well with the NHL. The comments aren’t terribly inflammatory, but they don’t paint the league in a great light. If you want to get rid of the parts of the game that serve no purpose, make a statement and suspend them for a long period of time. The league doesn’t want to do that just yet and you can see that in their suspension of Duncan Keith. They will need to get serious soon or it will be to the detriment of the future of the league.
