Anyone who knows me knows that I care as much about the brain health of athletes in this city as anyone around, but I also know that we need to match the vitriol with the incident or our attempts to get concussion knowledge out in to the public consciousness will fail.
The cause will not be helped by being alarmist.
Too many on the fence will just walk away from the fence if they see that any incident, no matter how minor, has the potential to jeopardize their enjoyment of their preferred sport.
We can't climb this mountain, if we concentrate on the pebble at the foot of it.
On any given Sunday, we see perhaps 10 incidents, maybe even more, where a contact has been so significant that a player remains on the ground, on his back, trying to regain his sense of self.
We only get to see one replay now in the NFL to learn how that contact hurt the player.
The NFL, I am fairly confident has told the TV networks to not show potential concussions over and over again.
We get one look to assess.
I assess. All the time. It's my thing you could say.
I see players down for two minutes who are just not fully there.
The trainer stands over them and wants to make sure that the player doesn't move.
If he moves, he will show the world that he has balance issues; that he can't walk straight; that he will fall over; that he is groggy.
The public show of weakness means he's off to the quiet room for a 15 minute SCAT3 test break -- minimum.
Coaches don't want that. Owners don't want that. The NFL doesn't want that.
The trainer wants to keep working so he follows what his boss wants.
Ten times a Sunday. In college football Saturday, another 10 times. Same thing. Down for minutes, clearly troubled.
Play on! Nothing to see here!
That's where we are right now in this battle. That's the demarcation line.
As much as it pained me to see Nathan Beaulieu take a direct shot on his chin and wobble, we simply are not at that spot yet where we can suggest that this is the mountain.
Beaulieu's quick recovery only a second later is the pebble at the foot of the mountain.
The mountain is still the times like Blues player David Backes fighting to stand for 40 seconds in the playoffs when Duncan Keith mocks Wakey Wakey Backes, or basically every time the Flyers have an incident like Steve Downie skating around like a zombie for a half minute clearly distressed and yet continuing to play. This is the mountain.
A lot of criticism is out there for the Habs this morning and only a small amount of it is justified.
The heat of the issue is around the medical staff not immediately attending to Beaulieu after he Bambied on the ice for the one second that he was traumatized.
What would you have them do? We don't have a solution yet here.
Would you like for the trainer to pull him out of the penalty box so the test can begin?
What would Beaulieu have thought of that?
Would he have said no, that he was fine?
If he does say he's fine, do they get in an argument at the penalty bench? This is a very tough spot for a training staff.
Referees should step in
The answer is very easy to be honest and I think it is time that the NHL look at it as a solution.
I would like to simply see that after each fight the refs pull the players to the training room for assessment, because it would take the guesswork out of it, but we all know this would not fly with proud athletes.
Therefore, the answer could be that any time there is a contact on the player's brain that causes a physical appearance of trauma that the player be pulled by the referee to the trainer's room.
This gets so grey though and makes the ref an arbiter of brain injuries suddenly, and that has its own issues.
Nothing could be done last night for Beaulieu. That was always going to play out like that, but let's look to the future here and realize that the player is supposed to be looked at right away and not after he serves his time in the box or at a more convenient time in the intermission.
Beaulieu got his concussion test in the intermission, and I think long term we can all see the inherent danger in that, but last night, unless the league leads the way to a mandated rule change that will always play out as it did.
NHL already has spotters
This leads us to the spotter. There is one in every NHL arena per game.
They are paid to look for head trauma and detail what they have seen from their location which can be upstairs in the gondola or even at ice level.
One would imagine that when a fight starts, and he or she has only had to look at two this entire year for the Habs, that they would be paying special attention.
If they see trauma, then he is supposed to communicate with the training staff.
I wonder what they were doing during the fight.
Notice here though that the spotter communicates with the training staff.
Not a head coach. A head coach is busy coaching.
The way it works is a coach is not going to be aware of a concussion issue unless the trainers whisper in his ear "Beaulieu's out for the night. Concussion."
Michel Therrien is busy matching lines, maybe changing lines, seeing who is hot so maybe he makes a late change of his ice time.
Therrien gets paid to win hockey games.
Tell him who he can choose from to play and they play. Case closed.
Concussions? Therrien just says... listen, can he play or not? And then he goes to work, as it is with every coach.
Therrien saying what is the difference between a quiet room and a penalty bench is, of course, obtuse but let's remember that he is a coach.
On a matter like this, if he doesn't know that there is a vast difference between the two as one has 21,000 people making noise, loud music blaring, and bright lights, he's made a mistake, but let's not hold him to a high standard of concussion knowledge.
Let's hold him to a high standard of making sure Bill Lindsay isn't out there at centre for the most important draw of the year; or that he hasn't let his temper get the best of him for an unsportsmanlike penalty that leads to the opposition scoring the winning goal.
That's how you hold a coach to the fire - on hockey decisions, not medical ones.
NHL should learn from outrage
Therrien learned something last night though, and in the big picture, that's a good thing.
The PR staff learned something last night, and in the big picture, that's a good thing.
The trainers learned something last night, and in the big picture, that's a good thing.
A lot of people learned that we aren't five years ago, or even two years ago, that the media and many fans and even non fans are becoming aware - that if protocols aren't met right, there will be concern for a player's health.
As there should be.
You can't get all frantic about a minor incident in your own back yard. Get frantic over the major incidents happening still en masse without medical care globally.
But let's get hungry for justice when there's been an egregious crime; our ability to get results and make real change will be much more easily met.
We've got a ways to go here, but we've come a long way too.
Let's not arrest our development crying wolf when the wolf has no teeth.
Let's cry when the situation truly calls for it.
Wakey, wakey, NHL!
