Neutral-Zone Crap: Bettman on the wrong side of history
Commissioner ignoring a possible link between head trauma from hockey and CTE is not only dishonest, it's dangerous...Plus, mirror images in Games 1 and 2 in Toronto-Tampa...and a novel draft strategy
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is already seven years behind the National Football League when it comes to head trauma. But hey, he’s in the Hockey Hall of Fame because 18 people on an early-summer afternoon decided it would be a good idea to enshrine a guy for doing his job while he was still doing his job.
But now it’s getting laughable. His statements on the link between the kind of head trauma that can occur in the NHL and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) are getting as ridiculous as those of the tobacco lobby when it comes to cigarettes and the National Rifle Association when it comes to guns. And he’s clearly putting himself on the wrong side of history.
Bettman again essentially disputed the notion that playing hockey at the highest levels, and the blows to the head that come with it, could result in CTE. “Now you’re going off on a tangent,” Bettman said in an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) with A Martinez. “We listen to the medical opinions on CTE and I don’t believe there has been any documented study that suggests that elements of our game result in CTE. There have been isolated cases of players who have played the game that have CTE, but it doesn’t necessarily come from playing in the NHL.” When reminded that the NFL acknowledged the link between head trauma and CTE in 2016, he then came up with, “What you’re trying to do is equate football to hockey, and the two are not comparable when it comes to head contact.”
He's absolutely right, of course. Because football players generally do not bare-knuckle punch each other in the head, do not drive their elbows up into their opponents’ heads or target the head when they hit. And there is at least one definitive study that links repeated head trauma and CTE. So for Bettman to continue to whistle by the graveyard is not only wrong, it’s dangerous. His league’s insistence on misleading people on this file serves to continue to make it easier for its fan base to accept blows to the head and fighting as “part of the game.”
Who knows why Bettman continues this charade? Even though the league paid $18.5 million – which represents 0.37 percent of the league’s yearly revenues – to settle a concussion lawsuit in which the league did not admit any liability – perhaps Bettman sees another one coming someday and he’s keeping his powder dry. And really, it’s a pretty good strategy. After all, it’s tough to endure a blow to the head when it’s in the sand.
MOMENTUM, SCHMOMENTUM
The next person who even suggests that momentum carries over from game to game in the playoffs is in line for a good old-fashioned paddling. And that could not have been on display any more than it was in Games 1 and 2 of the first-round series between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning.
Going into Game 2 of the series, the Lightning should have been soaring in confidence and the Maple Leafs should have been lower than a snake’s belly. But before fans could even take a sip of their $20 beers or tuck into their sushi, Mitch Marner made a play that turned the series. Marner, who probably gets maligned more for his playoff play than he should, picked off a D-to-D pass in the Lightning zone and drew a penalty at the 40-second mark. Seven seconds later, his slapshot from the blueline put the Leafs up 1-0 and the game was over, much the way it was in Game 1 when Pierre-Edouard Bellemare scored 1:18 to give the Lightning the lead. From there, Marner, John Tavares, Morgan Rielly, Ryan O’Reilly and Auston Matthews took over and, aside from a bit of pushback when the Lightning made it 3-1 in the second period, it was a beat-down.
“I think both games mirrored each other,” said Lightning coach Jon Cooper. “It’s a funny game and it’s why we love this game.”
Cooper was at his usual best in the post-game media conference. He certainly didn’t overreact to either of the games and when he was asked by a Tampa writer about complacency creeping in, he said, “Ed, it’s a seven-game series. It’s not a one-game one-and-done. We’ll be all right.” Then he was asked about the challenge of facing a team with the centre-ice depth of Matthews, Tavares and O’Reilly. “How many centres deep are we?” countered Cooper. “Give me (Brayden) Point, (Anthony) Cirelli and (Nick) Paul all day, against anybody in the league.”
STEELHEADS TO GO WITH A GOALIE
There’s a chance that the scouts for the Mississauga Steelheads will convince GM James Richmond to not use the seventh overall pick in the Ontario Hockey League draft on a goalie. To be sure, they’ll likely spend most of today at least trying to change his mind about taking a 16-year-old netminder by the name of Jack Ivankovic with that selection in the draft, which begins tonight with Rounds 1 through 3.
But in all likelihood, Richmond is prepared to accept the criticism and take a goalie, which means he’ll go into next season with a 17-year-old in Ryerson Leenders and a 16-year-old in Ivankovic, one of the most highly touted goaltending prospects in Ontario in years. Richmond knows he needs a defenceman. He also knows that he’ll receive criticism for taking a player who might only play one-third of the games next season. But teams will also take 16-year-old forwards who will get only 10 minutes a game next season, too.
The Steelheads just watched what started out as a season of promise go south because of unreliable goaltending. They don’t want that to happen again. If Leenders and Ivankovic develop, the Steelheads could have the best goaltending tandem in junior hockey within a year. Finding elite homegrown goalies in Ontario has been difficult to say the least, and the Steelheads could find themselves with two of them.
So here’s how it looks as though things will shake down early in Round 1:
Erie – Matthew Schaefer, D, Halton Hurricanes
Niagara – Ryan Roobroek, C, London Jr. Knights
Soo – Brady Martin, C, Waterloo Wolves
Kingston - Tyler Hopkins, C, Halton Hurricanes
Niagara - Ethan Czata, C, Mississauga Rebels
Oshawa - Owen Griffin, C, York-Simcoe Express
Mississauga – Jack Ivankovic, G, Mississauga Senators
Brantford – Jake O’Brien, C, Toronto Jr. Canadiens
One small quibble. I think it’d be pretty easy to find instances of NFL players driving their elbows up into their opponents’ heads and/or targeting the head when they hit.
Are they not setting themselves up for future Litigation ?