Yesterday the New York Rangers got their first bit of
good news concerning their star sniper Marian Gaborik and his recovery from the
concussion he suffered on February 13th on a hit from Brooks Orpik. The fact that Gaborik had his first symptom
free day on Tuesday, and was able to skate in practice on Wednesday is
excellent news. I do not want to take
away from how positive that news is, but I am more and more disturbed by the
chain of events that happened in the week between Gaborik taking the initial hit
and when he was actually pulled from action three games later.
Update from today:
The positive news was dampened some this morning with
the reports that while able to skate today, Gaborik awoke with a headache this
morning, which is also being classified as pressure in his head. There is a problem when a guy who is coming
off a concussion is allowed to even skate with anything going on in his head
and this idea that he wants to fly to Ottawa for tomorrow’s game should be
scrapped immediately.
Back to
yesterday:
Here is video from the Rangers official site of
Gaborik meeting with the media after practice to talk about the concussion and
his recovery:
Some of key quotes from his meeting with the media via
Jesse Spector at Blueshirts
Blog
"It was against Pittsburgh, I got hit by (Brooks) Orpik, and then during the shift after I kind of blacked out for a little bit," Gaborik said. "After that, I had headaches, and was dizzy and couldn't focus. I've never had a concussion, or whatever, before. I thought I was just going to play and it was just going to be a little bell-ringer, but it just kept getting worse and worse."
When any player, particularly a star player can tell
the media that he literally blacked out, had headaches and was dizzy following
a hit and was not checked it is a huge problem for me. I understand the machismo factor that is
involved here where Gaborik tries to brush off the symptoms and play through
them, but his lack of understanding of what concussion symptoms are is not an
excuse for him being able to play with one.
The NHL is all about this new focus on concussions and
yet here you have a player who was on the ice with one and if he played a
different style of game than he does could have easily taken a blow to his
already concussed head. If the NHL is
truly serious then they need to institute concussion testing to the level the
NFL did this season, where you have a baseline result, if you receive a
concussion you are done for that game and until you pass neurological testing
you cannot play again.
The onus for this is on the players, the teams and the
league if they are truly serious about fixing this problem. The players have to get over the stigma of
admitting they got their bell rung and possibly being called soft for going out
with a concussion and admit to the training staff like Jim Ramsay that
something is wrong so they can be diagnosed.
The training staffs and coaching staffs have to be more aware of the
potential for concussions and on the lookout for symptoms and anything that
presents to possibly fit those symptoms must be checked. The symptoms of the flu and a concussion can
be similar and while in many cases it might be a waste of time to check for the
concussion, do it anyway.
The fact that he played for an entire week, parts of
four different games with a concussion is simply unacceptable and the more
information that comes out the more questions there are about who knew what
when and who is responsible for allowing that to happen. The bulk of it has to go on the athlete
himself if he was not forthcoming with the team and training staff, but the
culture of the game both in the fear of being stigmatized as soft and the
urgency to win now also played a role in this in my opinion. We cannot overlook things that might be there
because we want to play or as an organization we want to win.
