The Lawyers Win Again

If you don't know who the guy to the left is, your life is probably better off without the knowledge. That's NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, and the 59 year-old was, at one time, an American attorney after graduating from NYU School of Law. Originally, he was hired as the NHL's senior vice president of legal affairs back in 1996 after having cut his team in the legal world with the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom for six years. Why am I so focused on his background in law? Well, it seems that his lawyer duties when it comes to liability overrides the common sense of listening to experts in medicine when it comes to the NHL's business.

As you know, we lost both Konstantin Koltsov and Chris Simon this week to suicide after their playing days had come to an end. We've seen other losses in this manner when it comes to the lives of Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak, and Rick Rypien, and it seems like the prevalence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in these athletes may have had a hand in, if not entirely led to, the unfortunate and tragic outcomes they chose. No one would have guessed that these men died so young after being heroes to so many people, but this is the reality of contact sports like hockey.

We can sit here and debate how we need more data or how there's no direct link between CTE and the deaths of these players, but the evidence is growing that there is certainly a cause-and-effect lineage being made by scientists and medical professionals who are studying CTE. A study published on May 10, 2023 by five medical doctors and one Associate Professor of Biostatistics found that the 6039 NHL players who careers fell between from 1967 to 2022 confirmed that NHL enforcers died at approximately 10 years earlier than their peers, but the authors did note that "long-term consequences of repetitive brain injury, especially for players who frequently engage in fighting, remains unknown."

There will be people who jump all over this and point to suicide rates in the general population as being close to the same rate that NHL players have committed suicide, but the study wasn't there to examine that. It was done to study the overall effect on NHL players' lives. The authors wrote,

"While fighting accounts for 9% of acute concussions in NHL players, repetitive head trauma may contribute to the development of headaches, depression, personality changes, and cognitive deficits. Later effects include increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and even suicide. A recent examination of all-cause mortality comparing National Football League (NFL) players with Major League Baseball players demonstrated that NFL players had an elevated all-cause mortality. A similar analysis of mortality rates in NHL enforcers is urgently needed to better characterize the long-term association of repetitive head trauma from fighting."

This is important because the study defined "enforcer" as "any player with 50 or more career fights and/or 3 or more penalty minutes per game." That means there could be a lot of physical defenders, power forwards, and hard-checking players who got added to the study's results based on the defined criteria. As such, a bigger pool of players will result in more accurate statistical reporting when it comes to the population of NHL players as a whole.

For those asking, the study identified 331 NHL players with 50 or more career fights and 183 NHL players that averaged more than three penalty minutes per game in their careers of the 6039 players that were identified as having participated in an NHL game between 1967 and 2022. That's 8.5% of NHL players over 55 years who fall into the "enforcer" definition, but the issue gets deeper when one looks at the breakdown of the numbers because, as per the study, "2 (9.5%) died of overdoses, 3 (14.3%) died of suicide, and 2 (9.5%) died of neurodegenerative diseases, while no controls died of these causes."

Let me repeat that in plain English: of 21 unique players identified as "enforcers" in the study, seven (33.3%) died from drug overdoses, suicide, or a disease like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease while the 24 unique players used as the control group had zero (0.0%) deaths from these three factors. With enforcers more likely to suffer with mental health issues and having an earlier age of death, one would expect the NHL to be very interested in these findings or, at the very least, aware of these studies proving that head trauma has long-term negative effects on players' lives, specifically if a player has played the game in a more physical manner.

Yet here was Bill Daly's response to a question posed from DailyFaceoff.com's Frank Seravalli about whether the NHL's perspective has changed with numerous medical studies showing a definitive link between CTE and repeated blows to the head:

Look, as infuriating as that response is, Bill Daly is a lawyer who works for the NHL, so he's going to protect the league from any liability regarding the history of head contact and trauma that have led to so many former players struggling with mental health and neurodegenerative diseases. That's not me rationalizing the comment, but giving you the reason for his response. He's a lawyer for the NHL, and his duty is to protect the NHL over their liability when it comes to the responsibility the league played in contributing to the poor health of its former players.

Is there a link between head trauma in violent sports, CTE, and the negative long-term effects seen in the health of players? Absolutely, and denying that link is to be ignorant of medical science entirely. The NHL has always maintained that there needed to be more studies and more definitive proof found, though, so they aren't completely denying the medical community's finidings, but they certainly aren't embracing them for liability reasons either. Living in that gap where one can cast doubt without fully denying the results gives the NHL just enough room to remain ignorant despite it being obvious to anyone who has been involved with the sport.

Until the NHL finally caves and admits that head trauma and CTE cause major health problems in their athletes, the lawyers like Gary Bettman and Bill Daly will remain undefeated despite the losses of all the players who we once idolized. Seems cruel, doesn't it?

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!