Look, I'm totally fine criticizing the NHL for their insanely flawed protocol regarding head injuries, so if we are treating this laughably amateurish treatment of Jonathan Quick as our bi-weekly example of the league's incompetence then I can get on board. However, if - and only if - we are going to pretend that the Kings' goaltender's health was put at a very real risk by staying in the game until the spotters upstairs belatedly realized they were missing a golden opportunity to seem as though they were actually looking out for the well being of the players then I'm a little more hesitant. I'm not exactly a neurologist, but if a glove brushing up against the side of a helmet can concuss a man that gets vulcanized rubber shot at him for a living then that man should already have been forced into another line of work. So yeah, on the surface it seems ludicrous that Jonathan Quick had the entirety of his head examined during one commercial break, but - by my estimation - it only takes about 3 seconds (give or take) to tell a medical professional that you helplessly threw yourself on the ice in hopes of drawing a call. Especially when the person who is doing so is relatively well known for...umm...let's call them his hockey histrionics...
I'm not ignorant enough to think that head trauma only comes in forms that are clear and present to the naked eye, but I am fairly certain it doesn't come in a form that serves as the Ice Capades equivalent of James Harden flailing to sell the most minimal of contact. Again, if the frustration is that a lightbulb popped up above the head of the NHL's foremost authority on brain injuries when they saw the chance to exploit a former NHL All-Star and use his ever-so-abrupt absence from the game as one of their few, patented, better-late-never, "see, we do care about our players!" moments then feel free in piling on. However, we aren't really acting like letting Jonathan Quick play 5 minutes before waving him to the bench to ask "you good?" following a pretty common collision is the most egregious thing the NHL has ever done, right? If so, our long term memory is failing us faster than those that played in a league that was complicit in hiding actual concussion problems prior to the last 2-3 years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|