by Ken Dryden
Then, near the end of the season, what was never going to happen, happened. He passed the tests, and on April 4, after the Senators had lost five straight games, he skated out onto the ice and played his first game in eighteen months. It’s hard to know who was the most emotional about his return—his teammates, his coaches, his wife, Jessica, his parents, the fans, or MacArthur himself. Even the media. It was so right. So perfectly just.
Then things got better.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Senators were leading the Bruins three games to two. The sixth game was in Boston. MacArthur scored the game-winning, series-winning goal in overtime.
It was beyond belief. So thrilling, so life-affirming, it didn’t matter if you hated the Senators or hated hockey and everything about it. It didn’t matter if you were a player, or coach, or GM, or owner, or fan, or journalist, or a doctor and knew something about concussions and felt your insides empty every time you saw MacArthur on the ice. It was such a great story. How good he must feel. How proud he must be. “It’s ecstasy that you can’t get anywhere else,” MacArthur told Toronto Star reporter Bruce Arthur a few days later. “Scoring in OT, scoring the game-winner, I always say it’s got to be like a 6/49 lottery knocking on your door and saying you’ve won $50 million.” But even better than the lottery, he had done it himself, through his own sheer will.
And this was exactly how it should be. How life should be. Four concussions in eighteen months tells us a lot. It is the writing that is unmissably on the wall. But it doesn’t tell us everything because we don’t know everything. Sometimes things happen that we don’t understand. We have to allow for that. We have to believe that we can create our own destiny every bit as much as science creates our destiny for us. After all, the concussion tests only say “not now.” They don’t say “not ever.”
Once MacArthur had started things in motion, once he kept on trying, kept on training, kept on showing up at the rink, once he had failed his baseline test but wouldn’t go home, what was going to stop him? Once he kept feeling a little better, and a little better, it was clear the team needed him and he needed the team, and the playoffs were getting closer. Once that mountain of hope and need to play built and built, higher and higher, and the story got better and better, who was going to say no to him? Who was going to tell him he couldn’t play? MacArthur, his wife, his parents, his teammates, his coaches, his GM, his owner, the doctors, the NHL’s Department of Player Safety, Gary Bettman? That would be so unconscionably cruel. He just wanted to feel normal again, and as it was with Marc Savard, normal was to play.
In Game 2 of the second round of the playoffs, Ryan McDonagh of the Rangers struck MacArthur with a high, hard, but not shuddering check. He left the game with what Ottawa called an “upper body injury,” what they and MacArthur later said was a pinched nerve in his neck, unrelated to the previous concussions he had suffered. Clarke MacArthur returned to the lineup for Game 3.
He played every game for the rest of the playoffs, nineteen in all, as the Senators beat the Rangers in six games. MacArthur recorded two assists in the series-winning game. The team lost to the Penguins in the next round, in the seventh game in overtime. He had three goals and six assists in all, seventh most on the Ottawa team, and averaged over fifteen minutes of ice time a game, seventh highest among the Senators forwards.
A few days after the season was over, MacArthur talked with Ottawa Citizen reporter Ken Warren about all the amazing ups and downs of the year for the team and for him. “It’s great to be back,” he said. “As much as I wanted it to happen, I never dreamed it would happen—let alone about how far our team got.” As for next season, suddenly circumspect, he said, “I just want to take a week or two and see how I feel. I still love playing the game.” He told Warren how, now more than three weeks after his initial injury, he was still feeling discomfort in his neck. “I feel pretty good,” he said. “I just want to make sure I’m all sorted out. It’s my neck, not anything else. It should be good. From the first round [against Boston] I could feel it. I will get an MRI and go from there.”
Hope, need to play, possibility, dream, excitement? The brain, as Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati said, will tell its own story.
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Then there was Sidney Crosby, Steve’s buddy from Vail. In a career filled with improbable moments, the 2016-17 playoffs may have been Crosby’s most improbable. Two days before MacArthur suffered his injury, Crosby, coming off the left wing, got a pass from teammate Jake Guentzel and cut to the net. Washington Capitals’ star Alex Ovechkin closed on him, cross-checked him across the shoulders, his stick glancing upwards, striking Crosby on the top of his helmet. Off balance, Crosby fell towards Capitals defenceman Matt Niskanen, who raised up his stick in front of him in cross-check position, hitting Crosby in the face. Play went on; Crosby remained on the ice.
Seven months earlier, Crosby collided in a pre-season practice with a teammate, felt his concussion symptoms come back, and missed the first six games of the year. It had been five years since his last concussion. In the time between, Crosby had won NHL trophies for most points, most goals, and MVP during the regular season and playoffs. He had captained the Penguins and Team Canada to a Stanley Cup, Olympic gold medal, World Championships, and a World Cup of Hockey Championship (where he was also named the MVP). He had become universally acknowledged (again) as the best player in the world. Then came that nothing moment in that nothing practice.
A story about Crosby in the Toronto Star a few days after his injury began, “We kind of hoped we were past this.” Based on what? According to whom?
Then Crosby returned to play, and had one of the best of his many outstanding seasons. He led the league in goals, was second in scoring, and second in voting for the league’s MVP. And the Penguins, ahead 2–0 in their series against the Capitals, the NHL’s regular season champion, were suddenly a favourite to win another Cup. Now this.
The debate started up again. Hockey’s critics criticized. Its defenders defended. It sounded like Marek, Shannon, Morrison, and the dead parrot all over again. Niskanen raised up his stick. It was intentional. No, it was accidental. Niskanen should be suspended. No, he shouldn’t. Ovechkin’s vicious hit had started things. No, it didn’t. It was a “hockey play.” No, it wasn’t. Niskanen received a game misconduct, but was not suspended for any further games. Intentional? Accidental? The brain doesn’t distinguish. The next day, the Penguins announced that Crosby had suffered a concussion. His playing status was termed “day-to-day.” He did not play in Game 4.
Commentary about Crosby and his concussions that had been put on the shelf for five years, came down off it again. For his part, Crosby did what he had learned to do. Immediately after his injury, he made no comment, left the public eye, and retreated into a world of the few he trusts most, and mostly into himself. As he said later, “I know my body,” and he needed quiet to know what his body was telling him. Three days after his injury he appeared again for practice. The next day, he passed his baseline test and engaged in full practice, which included the usual incidental contact. Hockey commentators assumed, at best, he wouldn’t dress for Game 5 a day later. The Penguins were ahead three games to one in the series; if Crosby had any thought of playing again in the playoffs why not give himself a few more days to heal. It only made sense. That night, he played more than nineteen minutes, about his playoff average, got an assist on a goal by Phil Kessel, and played in the hard areas of the ice, in the corners and in front of the net, in the way he always does it.
The Penguins lost. In the first period of Game 6, Crosby was hit in the nose with a stick. In the second period, going to the net, he was knocked out of control and flew crumpled into the boards striking his shoulder and head. In a single instant, 19,000 Penguins fans sucked the air out of the arena. Crosby got up and continued. At the end of the game, Hockey Night in Canada host Ron Maclean said in summary that how Crosby had dealt with this tough, punishing night “will stamp out a lot of conjecture….It’s do
ne,” MacLean said, then as if hearing his own voice and becoming suddenly aware of everything that had come before for Crosby and other players, he caught himself and said, “Maybe it’s not done.” For games afterwards, when Crosby went onto the ice a confusion of feelings went with him—about him and his play; about him and his health. About hope; and about fear.
Crosby’s play through the playoffs, in wins over Columbus, Washington, and Ottawa, had seemed more up and down than usual, and in speculation about the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player, he was rarely if ever mentioned. That changed in the last few games of the finals against the Nashville Predators. Tied 2–2, Game 5 would turn the series one way or the other. And Crosby dominated. He dominated in every way—in what he did and how he did it; in making his teammates better and his opponents worse. The Penguins won 6–0. A few nights later, they won the sixth game and their second straight Stanley Cup, and Crosby his second straight Conn Smythe Trophy.
Had Crosby been affected by his concussion? He said nothing about it. To many, it seemed rash that he had come back so soon after the injury. He doesn’t play a safe style of game. Gretzky and Mario Lemieux both gave themselves space with their ability to imagine the possibilities of a play, and then their ability to create it—Gretzky with his passes, Lemieux with his puck-handling and reach. Crosby, in today’s faster, more congested game, has always had to fight for his space. His is a game of skill and will. He is the most Canadian of hockey’s great stars. By continuing to play, he couldn’t add much to what is already in the record books. He might only add to his legend: remember the year Crosby returned from his concussion and, mucking and scrapping, took his team on his back, and won. But Crosby didn’t keep playing to add to his legend. Legends play, as others do, because their team and their teammates need them, because the season is still there to be won, and because every player has only a few Stanley Cups in him. If Crosby didn’t quite know that in 2009 when he was twenty-one and won for the first time, at twenty-nine, he does now. Other teams improve, age catches up, the salary cap spreads Cup-winning players to the four winds of the league. Every year might be a player’s last, best chance.
When concussions don’t disappear into the distraction of a long season, when they matter every day, every game, we can see them for what they are. For two months, the 2017 playoffs offered an unmissable view of the twisting, turning, haunting, complicated state of concussions and the game. In the celebration and glow of achievement that follows, the draft, and free agency, this can be quickly forgotten. The question is now what it has always been: how can we make better decisions about concussions? How do we create the circumstances for Gary Bettman, where it is difficult for him not to do what needs to be done, and easy for him to do it?
First, Gary Bettman and the league need to recognize that the problem of brain injuries comes from the way we play. And how we play in the future is not inevitable.
Bettman might use his clever lawyer’s mind instead to get out of whatever awkward box he has put himself into, and put himself into a better one. He might say that science is crucial in informing us and guiding us and that, in fact, he and the NHL will work to enhance and speed up science by helping to fund its best and most promising research. But he could also say: Whatever science says about the connection between hockey and brain diseases, too many of our players are experiencing lingering effects from their injuries—whether to their knees or hips, or to their heads—and we want to do something more about that. We are always looking to reduce injuries in our game. That’s why we created the Department of Player Safety (“the first of its kind in professional sports”). So we are going to take a comprehensive look at our game, as every sport should, to ensure that it remains the great, exciting game to play and to watch, but to see how we can make it safer, too. And because of the public’s interest, we will put particular focus on head injuries.
There is a phrase many of us love and often use because we want it to be true, and we know it can be true. Ever hopeful and unconquerable: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Yet, when facing deep-seated, complicated problems, the obverse of the phrase is more often true: Where there’s a way, there’s a will. Because after experiencing failure upon failure, the will grows tired, and committing our whole selves to something and failing, hurts too much. The will is not gone, it’s busy scaling shorter mountains. It is a will that needs a way. It needs a first step, that leads to a next step, and to a next, each one possible, all of them together leading excitingly towards something big and doable. Give me a way and I will give you a will. If you don’t, I will change what I know I can change, and manage the rest.
It is why awareness isn’t the answer. Awareness speaks only to the will. It is why scientists aren’t the answer and decision-makers are. For a decision-maker, a problem without an answer, a what without a how, a will without a way, can be ignored and denied. They can try to sell you something they can do with their eyes closed and sell it like crazy as if it’s the real answer, the real how, the real way, but which speaks instead to the dimensions of the problem as they see it, and not of the problem itself.
Until now, it seems as if Gary Bettman and those around him do not believe that there is a way to make this game just as exciting to play and to watch, just as successful off the ice and on, but significantly, appropriately safer. No answer; no problem. No way; no will.
But there is a way. Bettman and others could bring together the most respected people in the sport, whoever they are—players, former players, coaches, former coaches, as well as doctors and researchers—from Canada, from the U.S., from wherever in the world, and pose to them the question, and have them answer: How do we reduce the frequency and force of blows to the head? These are people who know the game, who know what makes it exciting to play and to watch, who are capable every day of seeing it with fresh eyes: what it is, not what they already know it to be. People who understand that there are a hundred ways to play the game, and to play it successfully, excitingly, and to win. If two players race into a corner for the puck, they know it isn’t about who gets there first, or who hits whom, but who controls the puck and makes the play. They know that there is more than one way to make the play successfully, and that some ways leave a player more vulnerable to a head hit. What, then, are the best ways to make that play successfully and safely?
These players and coaches will come up with good answers. They are among the most creative people on earth because they are among the most competitive people on earth. They are always looking for something new and better so they can win. In this case, as it relates to hits to the head, what is that something better? Put them around the same table to talk about this, and do it in public so everybody can watch them and listen to them and think along with them, and understand as they understand; and online, so people are able to add their own thoughts. So when the discussion is over, it’s not really over. So people will continue to talk about it, and think about it. And so the media will, too. And parents. And other players and coaches, at all levels. Because if these actions are good enough for the best in the world to take, they’re good enough for them. So that when games are played, if what is implemented isn’t good enough, as with every game plan, they can adapt and make it better.
For Gary Bettman and the league, this is not just about acknowledging problems, it is about focusing on answers. It is a chance to turn what can feel like grim necessity into exciting possibility. A chance not to run away from a problem, but to run towards an answer. A way and a will together. A chance to resolve, not manage, something that is not fair, not right, and not necessary.
Two small changes—no hits to the head; no finishing your check—and one process: actions of a dimension consistent with the dimension of the problem; actions to achieve, not just do; actions that Gary Bettman can implement easily. Actions that leave him no reason not to.
Steve Montador and others are gone. But something good can come out of something very bad. 2017 is the
NHL’s one-hundredth anniversary. It is a natural time to look back, to see where we’ve been, to see where we are, to see where we’re going. To celebrate, and to thank those who have made the game what it is. But the best kind of celebration always looks forward even as it looks back. The game of the past doesn’t matter much unless the game of the present is strong; unless the imagined game of the future is even better. Maurice Richard and Gordie Howe gave meaning to Cyclone Taylor and Howie Morenz before them, and Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky to Richard and Howe, because each made the game better. It is the players who come after 2017 who will give meaning to the NHL’s first hundred years. Gary Bettman and the league need to give those players the chance to make the game better still. To make 2017 an anniversary worth commemorating.
Gary Bettman’s contract runs five more years. During that time, he could play out the string, make lots more money, and feel the daily assurance that comes from doing what he already knows how to do. Or he could take on some big, important things. He could use the considerable power and skills he has developed to make hockey the exciting, amazing, safer, better game it can be in the future. Gary Bettman doesn’t need to be a tobacco baron or a climate change–denier fighting against the night. His biggest contribution is still ahead.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
