For years officials in the National Hockey League (NHL) have denied there was any connection to fighting in hockey and concussions.
However, newly released emails among top NHL officials seem to indicate the officials knew of the link.
Even after a court decision in which the U.S. National Football League (NFL) paid a $765 million settlement to former players suffering mental and emotional problems blamed on repeated concussions, the NHL claimed the hockey situation was different.
More than 100 former players disagree and earlier this years filed a similar lawsuit against the NHL saying they also should have known about the link between repetitive concussions and brain damage, and should have told players about it. The NHL argues there is no clear evidence of such a link.
A US Federal Court judge hearing the case has now ordered a number of emails among NHL officials to be unsealed in spite of League efforts to keep the correspondence sealed.
In one 2011 email, NHL Commissioner, Gery Bettman, wrote that the players union and the “enforcers” on teams objected to eliminating staged fights, writing, “Eliminating fighting would mean eliminating the jobs of the ‘fighters’, meaning that these guys would not have NHL careers. An interesting question is whether being an NHL fighter does this to you (I don’t believe so) or whether a certain type of person (who wouldn’t otherwise be skilled enough to be an NHL player) gravitates to this job (I believe more likely).”
In response NHL Deputy Commissioner, Bill Daly sent a email in regarding the personal tragedies of former players writing that, “fighting raises the incidence of head injuries/concussions, which raises the incidence of depression onset, which raises the incidence of personal tragedies.”
In 2014 Gary Meagher, the N.H.L.’s vice president for communications wrote in reference to the NFL’s changed position on concussions, “The N.H.L. has never been in the business of trying to make the game safer at all levels and we have never tried to sell the fact that this is who we are”.
Michael Cashman, a lawyer for the former players, said in an interview with TSN, “that Meagher’s email is evidence that the NHL “has never been serious about player safety at all levels of hockey and has been unwilling to spend the money necessary to be a true leader.”
CBC Sports- Michael Drapack; Feb 2016
http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/grand-ledyard-nhl-lawsuit-1.3432273
NY Times-
Sports Illustrated
http://www.si.com/nhl/2016/03/28/nhl-concussions-fighting-head-injuries-unsealed-emails
PBS Frontline : NFL- concussion timeline
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/timeline-the-nfls-concussion-crisis/
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