Articles

[hockeygod]

‘As a fighter in hockey, you live in fear’

Sean Fitz-Gerald May 5, 2011 – National Post Sports

TORONTO — If it was Chicago, it might be two bottles of wine. They always seemed to have tough guys in Chicago, scary guys who would keep Jim Thomson awake the night before a game, and the extra wine at dinner helped to fortify him for what lay ahead.

Sometimes the anxiety led to more self-medication, pills that helped him get over the fear of being knocked unconscious in front of 20,000 fans. He was a fighter.

“As a fighter in hockey, you live in fear,” Thomson said.

He lived on the margins of the roster, protecting Wayne Gretzky one year, playing for the Phoenix Roadrunners the next. Thomson logged dozens of fights over a 115-game career, and when it ended, he suffered.

“I went through periods of depression,” he said. “I’m a recovering alcoholic. I believe a lot of my demons, if you will, came from hockey ending and the head blows and certain things that I wasn’t aware of.”

Now 45, Thomson said he “easily” suffered five or six concussions. During one stretch in the American Hockey League, he was punched so hard in a fight on Friday that he cannot remember what he did on the ice during Saturday or Sunday’s games.

On Wednesday, Thomson was among a collection of current and former athletes gathered at the Hockey Hall of Fame to promote a website (stopconcussions.com) designed to help educate athletes on the cause, effects and consequences of concussion. Retired NHL star Keith Primeau was the keynote speaker, but Thomson delivered perhaps the most radical solution to reducing the risk on the ice.

The former fighter would like a blanket ban on fighting in hockey.

“Get it out,” he said. “I mean, come on, why do we need it?”

He referred to it, more than once, as “bare-knuckle fighting.”

“I am tired of sitting with my kids and two guys drop the gloves, and I’m waiting for a guy to be shaking on the ice in a seizure or knocked out,” he said. “It’s an ugly scene.”

According to hockeyfights.com, the online authority on such matters, Thomson fought 31 times in the NHL. He had 12 in one season with the Los Angeles Kings, including two on the same night, when he fought Mike Peluso and Stu Grimson in Chicago.

Thomson said someone sent him a tape not that long ago, featuring 82 of his fights. In the old days, he might have called his friends over to watch. Instead, he watched with a sense of alarm, wondering about the long-lasting damage he might have incurred.

“I was on death row for a while,” he said. “This was after hockey — I was so depressed, everything came to an end, and I went bankrupt. All of these things just end. I look back on it, and it’s all a big mess. It’s all a big foggy mess.”

There is no question in his mind that depression led to his drinking problem. Leaving the game and the lifestyle behind contributed to his depression, but the stories rushing across the sporting landscape about the troubles facing oft-concussed former athletes make him wonder what role his own repeated head trauma might have played.

“I believe it’s all in one,” he said. “The brain just keeps getting hit, hit and hit.”

Former National Football League safety Andre Waters was one of the first retired athletes to be diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative disease associated with repeated brain trauma. Waters killed himself, at age 44, with signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s and the brain tissue consistent of a man almost twice his age.

That was four years ago. More have since been diagnosed — all post-mortem, because the testing requires brain tissue — including former NHLers Reggie Fleming and Bob Probert, whom Thomson counted as a friend.

“As this gets more out there, my kids are asking me, ‘Dad, do you think this will affect you?’ ” he said. “Bob Probert was very close to me and my kids. We did that movie Love Guru together. Bob lived with me for five months, and my kids got really attached to him.”

Thomson has five children. He said he has been sober for three years and now works as a motivational speaker.

After dozens of fights — “I remember a lot of them, and I remember getting rocked” — there is one speech he still cannot deliver. He does not know what to say when his children ask if their father will end up like Probert, or like the stories of other troubled former athletes they have started to watch on the news.

“I can’t answer it,” Thomson said. “Who knows?”

Does that prospect scare him?

“Damn right it scares me,” he said. “We used to smoke everywhere in the country. Smoked in movies, smoked in airplanes. And finally we realized it’s going to kill you. And this is kind of the same situation.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Why one scientist is looking at former NHLers brains

James Mirtle – Toronto— Globe and Mail Blog – Posted on Friday, May 6, 2011

Last week, the NHL's alumni association announced it had formed a partnership with one of the world’s top neuroscience centres, the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest in Toronto, to study up to 100 former players for signs of mental health changes as they age.

The study will involve analyzing former NHLers’ brains with in-depth cognitive tests and magnetic resonance imaging, a process that will be completed for every participant every three years with the hopes that results can be produced two or three years from now.

I sat down with Baycrest senior scientist Brian Levine yesterday to talk about the study, with the results of our Q&A below. He said what he is attempting to do is answer the question of "Does playing in the NHL affect your brain health later in life?"

Q: What prompted Baycrest to get involved with NHL Alumni and study their brains?

BL: We already do a lot of work in aging and my work in addition to aging and dementia includes head injuries and brain imaging. Baycrest has had this long-standing involvement already with NHL Alumni for fundraising and the Gordie and Colleen Howe Fund. It was very natural for the connection of hey why don't we take the opportunity, let's get together and involve them in our research.

Q: Do you have any idea what you might find in closely examining former players' brains?

BL: A lot of times we do a study and we have a hypothesis, we have a really strong idea of what we're going to find. I'm characterizing this as more of an exploratory study. We have a pretty good idea of the factors involved in brain health. We don't know how they all interact.

Diet, exercise, taking care of yourself, stress, all of those things affect brain health. We know that head injuries are related to brain health, especially as they relate to aging. We know that genetics is related to brain health. There's now recent research showing that there are certain genes that increase the chance of getting dementia if you've had a head injury. They interact. So the risk is even greater.

This is an opportunity for us to put all of these things together in a set of high-performance athletes and analyze all of these factors together.

Q: Some of the NHL Alumni seem skeptical that head injuries are tied to developing dementia and other later issues. What do you think the study might show?

BL: As a scientist, we leave our expectations and our biases at the door. Our goal really is to get at the best version or the closest to the truth as possible. I know that there is skepticism [from some players]. There’s also groups that say there is a connection.

We try to answer the question as best we can without any kind of preconception or bias. That's why we're being very comprehensive in our testing. One hypothesis is that if you've been banged around a lot and knocked out a few times, it might affect your brain health in the future. Well, there's some evidence to support that and there's some case studies out there that are very dramatic that we've heard about.

But not everyone that gets dementia has had a head injury in their past. So we really want to get the full range of factors.

Q: It could be there's no relation between playing in the NHL and these later issues?

BL: That's why we do the research. If we knew the answer in advance, there'd be no point in doing it.

Q: Are there other similar studies that have pointed you in a direction with your own approach?

BL: There are but there hasn't been anything that I know of that's that comprehensive and longitudinal. This is a long-term commitment. There's always good quality research coming out that's suggestive and informative, but these are not simple questions and we don't expect there to be a simple answer.

Q: How long will it take to get results from something like this?

BL: There are two ways of doing this kind of research. There's the longitudinal method, where you follow people over time, and there's what we call the cross-sectional method, where you take a group of people, let's say by ages, and you test people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s. We can do the cross-sectional method now [on former players] and look at people across the age span and I think get some pretty good results within say two, three years. Just give us enough time to collect the data, analyze it. That will give us some preliminary answers.

There will always be a limitation in that, which is people will say you're comparing an 85-year-old guy that played without a helmet, had a whole different life and lived in a whole different context, to a 60-year-old guy. We acknowledge those limitations and that's why we do the longitudinal study, which is much more of a commitment to do.

We're doing both. We're studying players, looking between individuals, young and old, and also the control group is important. We also want to know out of people who weren't NHL players, how many of them will develop something? We can do all that, rapidly, in a cross-sectional study. And then we take everyone and we track them every three years and we watch them over time.

Q: Is this something you believe will be maintained with the NHL Alumni over decades?

BL: Yes, I do. That's the idea. We feel we can get results that will be very informative and important because of what we're doing in two, three years. But the longitudinal aspect will give us even higher quality data over time.

Q: What do you think of all of the coverage of concussions in hockey and these issues? Does there need to be more research done?

BL: Of course. I've read what's going on, I follow what's going on and as a scientist, we don't go by what the media says. We pay attention to it, it's intriguing, but that isn't the place we look to for answers in terms of what we think is going on.

There's a lot of guesswork involved. At every stage there's guesswork involved. I don't want to criticize the media, I don't want to criticize the NHL. I’m just a scientist that sees an interesting question and that gets me excited. Let’s answer this question. That's really exciting.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Concussion fight is the good fight

JEFF BLAIR | TORONTO— From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, May. 05, 2011 7:14PM EDT

They are all doing God’s work, really. Charles Tator, Matt Dunigan, Keith Primeau, Nick Kypreos and all the men and women in the lab coats – the whole lot of them.

Roll your eyes if you must whenever somebody calls a news conference and stands up and talks about concussions and research and the effects of brain injury. Most likely, that means you’re not a parent.

It might seem quaint to the middle-aged guy fiddling with his fantasy draft over a beer, this notion of handing out wallet-sized cards to amateur football players listing step-by-step concussion warning signs. Piffle. Pansies.

Yet that is really all that can be done right now. Increase awareness. Solicit brains from former athletes for posthumous research into the degenerative effects of concussions. Because the sad fact is, for professional leagues – let alone amateur leagues and athletes – the economics of concussion determination and treatment are not on our side. And by “our” I mean players, administrators, coaches, doctors … and parents.

Still, some of us wonder whether it isn’t time for leagues to do spot testing of players’ cognitive abilities at various points during a season, especially in high-impact sports such as football and hockey. If we can test for steroids, we ought to test for this, no?

It beats taking a guy back into a “quiet room” for 15 minutes – especially, in light of a “joke” tweet from Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning last month about tanking his baseline concussion test.

Tator, head of the ThinkFirst brain and spinal cord injury prevention program and a renowned neurosurgeon and researcher at Toronto Western Hospital, is not one to mince words when it comes to the topic of concussions and sports. (Just ask CBC hockey analyst Don Cherry.)

He realizes that some place in the middle between helping parents and youngsters and doing research on brains that have been donated posthumously lies a bottom line: Sports equipment companies and leagues are driven by profits, which means, simply, there is an unspoken yet obvious economic imperative for team physicians and players.

Put it this way: Do you think every CFL team would be able to afford 20 players on its disabled list with post-concussion syndrome? You think a 27-year-old import offensive lineman on his second CFL team who has bombed out of three NFL training camps is going to err on the side of caution? What about that journeyman fourth-liner in hockey?

As Tator says, absent definitive bio-markers – which science has not yet found – “the best method of assessing the effects of a concussion are through a trained observer, a trained physician and a compliant patient. If you have a physician who isn’t trained and a patient who does not want to be compliant, you get nowhere.”

It is sad but true that we are still very much doing the one-step-at-a-time routine with concussions while athletes are getting bigger and faster, equipment is getting lighter, and nutrition and medicine means they’re staying in the game longer and absorbing more hits. Also sad but true is that it costs money to do this thing properly. Scads of it.

“There are two types of cognitive tests,” Tator says. “There is the interactive test – 20 minutes, $50 – where you come up with a numerical score as a baseline and redo half-way through the season and see the difference. Sounds good on paper, but does it work? We don’t know the answer.

“Some doctors and experts rely on these tests, while others say they’re unproven. I’m somewhere in the middle, but I know this: I rely on formal, neuropsychological testing, by which I mean a few hours of a neuropsychologist’s time to assess a player’s cognitive functioning. It’s very costly, unfortunately, so you can’t apply it to everybody but I know that when I get back a report from a neuropsychologist after that type of an assessment that I can rely on that – and use that information when I make a decision on whether a player should go back into their action or terminate a career,” Tator says.

“That’s a big decision, so I insist on the gold standard, which is a non-20 minute, non-computerized, once-over-lightly test.”

It’s an ugly truth, but that doesn’t mean this is a fight to give up. The exact opposite, in fact.

Forget hunting for steroids and performance-enhancing substances: This is the real issue. Even if its not as sexy or black-and-white moralistic.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

YOUR CALL: WHAT ROLE SHOULD INTEGRITY PLAY IN THE PLAYOFFS?

TSN.CA STAFF 5/9/2011

'Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.'

'If you aren't cheating, you aren't trying.'

Those are just two sayings people use to justify bending the rules over the course of a contest or a season with the idea that the final goal is most important and any path taken to get there can be justified.

But would you want the team you cheer for to win at all costs?

Vancouver Canucks defenceman Kevin Bieksa might disagree with that premise. Over the course of the second round series between the Canucks and the Nashville Predators, many of Bieksa's teammates have been accused of play acting or faking hurt in order to draw penalties.

Ryan Kesler, for example, was accused of 'chicken-winging' Shea Weber's stick and was able to earn a hooking penalty on his opponent. Goaltender Roberto Luongo was accused of pretending to be clipped by Jerred Smithson's stick and Maxim Lapierre was also caught on camera faking contact.

"When Smithson got the penalty he just moved his stick over Luongo," said Nashville coach Barry Trotz. "All of a sudden, his stick goes to the other side, (Luongo's) head kicks back and he gets a penalty. To me, as I said in the last series, that's gamesmanship and I understand that.

"But it's also putting the referees in a tough spot. We have the best referees and if you are going to make them look bad I don't think that's needed in the game."

Bieksa, speaking to a Vancouver newspaper, warned his teammates that while they are playing by the rules, there should be more honour in victory.

"It's not cheating," Bieksa told the Vancouver Province. "It's within the rules and if the referee wants to assess it, he can penalize you for it. It's not cheating but it is a matter of integrity."

Let us know where you stand.

Is it more important to you that the players you cheer for play 'the right way' or would you rather celebrate a championship no matter the means it takes to get there? And would a title be tarnished if the players on the team you support bent the rules in order to go all the way?

Share your thoughts below and as always, It's Your! Call.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Daniel Tkaczuk: Hidden pros and cons of life after pro hockey

The Hockey News Daniel Tkaczuk 2011-05-08

So you want to become a pro hockey player? Follow your dreams of making it to the NHL and winning the Stanley Cup? Make a living playing a sport that you love? Live in the spotlight?

Growing up and going through the Canadian minor hockey system, players get a wide array of advice on the world of hockey. The usual tidbits include the need to get an education, the length of a hockey career and the small percentage of active participants who get to make a living from this game; pretty standard and very repetitive.

Unfortunately, hockey and other pro sports have become akin to Hollywood movies. A pyramid scheme with those at the top making tremendous amounts of money, while supporting players/actors are replaceable and lead a much different life. Aside from the NHL, players can make a living at hockey in the American League, ECHL, Central League, Europe or Asia. Each league and situation varies in style of play, salary and format. Every individual player’s experience inside the game is different. However, there are some noticeable trends, both positive and negative, for those making a career as a hockey player that can also affect you later in life. Here are just a few:

Positive

Culture And Travel – As a pro player you get the opportunity to travel a little bit more and usually live in a different culture. When you live in a different city and country, you begin to learn about its history and customs that are different than your own. You may learn there is more than one way to do things, speak an entirely different language, try drinks and foods that you have never heard of and take in different festivals. You will also likely get to see how other parts of the world view the game of hockey and North America.

Adaptability – Every year you pretty much have a new set of teammates and friends that come from different backgrounds, are different ages and have different religions and values. You must be able to be a part of a group and work towards a common goal. This makes a hockey player more open-minded and communicative. This is part of the reason why pro players are great dinner guests and usually do well in a sales career.

Ability To Work Through Challenges In A Group – Having to work through high-pressure circumstances with a team gives a player the ability to accept a role and stay focused on a specific task. They develop inter-personal skills, become mentally tough and learn leadership values. These qualities are being lost as more and more youths interact behind a computer screen in the Internet era, but these assets are great for any company in a competitive market that values teamwork and requires its employees to work together to solve problems or issues. And this is partly why many former hockey players have made their way towards being a police officer or firefighter.

Job Skills/Resume – Unfortunately, to advance to the pro levels players must make sacrifices that demand most of their time and energy is spent towards developing their game. This leaves very little opportunity for an individual to build easily recognizable skills that relate to the regular working world. Players end up exiting hockey mostly between the ages of 25 and 35 and lack real world job skills that can be put on a resume.

Public Image – There is no escaping it. The more success you have as a player the more friends and popularity you will have. But this is a double-edged sword: cost the team a victory or stop putting up points and it must mean you don’t care or you’re a bad person. People will judge you without ever meeting you.

Personal Relationships – One thing you never hear as a young player is the amount of strain a career in hockey can put on your existing relationships. For long periods of time you are away from your friends and family. You may not be able to attend family gatherings on holidays or at weddings and funerals. Having a relationship while playing the game is also difficult for a partner/spouse who usually will not be able to work or attend school and is displaced from their own support network of friends and family. This can put a lot of added strain on a player as the sole provider and on the relationship in general.

Habits – Some habits are great inside the game, but can be detrimental outside the game. Hockey players have a need to compete on the ice and off it. It is no surprise players turn the habit of playing cards on the bus into a serious gambling addiction fueled by uncontrollable, competitive emotion. It is extremely hard for players to transition to life outside hockey. Punching the clock from nine-to-five and reporting to a boss day in day out is a difficult lifestyle hurdle for most players to accept after they have spent years on a different clock. Most don’t survive past the first month inside their first post-hockey job.

Life as a pro hockey player can be great. There are many hidden advantages and unfortunate trends players must seriously consider before choosing it as their career path. Players' unions are trying to provide support programs that make the transition from a playing career easier, but they have a long way to go.

Get educated and be prepared for the challenges that lie ahead with a pro hockey career.

Daniel Tkaczuk was Calgary's first round pick in 1997 (sixth overall) and has been playing professionally in North America and Europe for the past 12 seasons. He is currently president of iHockeyTrainer.com, an online hockey school for skill development.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

NHL ignoring concussion protocol: former players

May 8, 2011 By Teddy Katz CBC Sports

Several former players are giving the NHL barely a passing grade for its new concussion protocol and how it's working so far in the playoffs.

With the game's best player, Sidney Crosby, out with a concussion for months, the issue has been front and centre this year.

Two months ago, the league said it would more strictly enforce penalties when it comes to head hits – and supplementary discipline to try to reduce headshots.

The league also announced the new protocol. It requires any player suspected of having a concussion to go immediately to a quiet room for 15 minutes to be assessed by the team doctor.

But in the middle of the playoffs, several former players point to a couple of controversial hits as evidence the league isn't living up to its promises.

Exhibit A: Vancouver's Raffi Torres' punishing hit on an unsuspecting Brent Seabrook of Chicago in Round 1.

What happened after, the former players say, is the exact opposite of what is supposed to take place.

The victim (Seabrook) continued playing and didn't even go to the quiet room to be examined.

Seabrook eventually got hit again and was forced to leave the game.

But the player who did the hitting – Torres – continued playing.

And there was no suspension.

Letdown

This concerns Bryan Muir, who won a Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2001.

"Some of the suspensions that were handed out prior to the playoffs were great," Muir says.

He adds: "It was an initiative to say this is where we stand. This is how serious we are on it [headshots]. And then to now follow through in the playoffs with some of the incidents that have happened is a bit of a letdown for me."

The Torres hit isn't the only hit that's left Muir shaking his head.

Exhibit B: Boston's Andrew Ferrence sticks out his shoulder and whacks Montreal's Jeff Halpern in the jaw in Game 6 of their first-round series.

Neither is even close to the puck.

Once again, there's no suspension for Ferrence.

The fans in Boston boo as Halpern slowly makes his way off the ice. They seem more concerned about their player getting a penalty than the other's safety.

This really bothers Wayne Primeau, who has played 14 years in the NHL.

His brother Keith had to retire from the game after a nasty hit left him suffering from concussions for years afterward.

"For sure because this is not a laughing matter … I mean this is no joke," he says.

Pushing for headshot ban

Keith Primeau is pushing for the NHL to ban all headshots because of the impact it had on his life and other players forced to retire.

He gives the NHL credit for doing something.

But when asked this week to give the new policy a midterm grade out of 10, he says the league is barely passing.

"It's probably about 5 or 6 … unfortunately they're dealing with it on a case by case basis."

Jim Thomson is even harsher. Thomson played in the NHL in the 1980s and 90s. He was a fighter and suffered several concussions.

Now his biggest fight is to get the NHL to change fast enough.

"A lot of sickens me. We're talking about so many players losing their careers and we're doing nothing about it," he says.

In an e-mail to the CBC, the NHL's deputy commissioner Bill Daly has a different view.

He says there's always going to be debate about suspensions.

But he says the NHL is pleased with how its new concussion protocol is working so far despite the criticism from the former players.

"It is necessarily a work in progress, and I expect that it will continue to be refined and improved as we learn more and have more experience with the protocol in practice," Daly says.

He adds, "But the bottom line is that it has clearly raised awareness and sensitivity at the club level."

Culture change

Still, Thomson says one big thing that needs to change is the culture of players sucking it up and playing through pain when it comes to concussions.

He wasn't surprised to see Seabrook keep playing after taking his big hit. But he was disappointed.

"Surprise me? I mean I went through it. When I played it was like go home, get your roommate to wake you up every two hours and take Advil. I played a whole weekend series I don't remember it."

Thomson says given what's now known about concussions, players like Seabrook have to be thinking about more than just the winning the game.

"Don't tell me he was perfect. He was about repeating as Stanley Cup champion because he's young … the team needs him. Don't tell me they took safety precautions. They didn't even take him into the quiet room until they finally said we better do this or we're going to get in shit."

In the hunt for the Stanley Cup, players are not completely honest about how they're feeling.

In a recent interview with CBC, Ian Laperierre of the Philadelphia Flyers says he didn't come clean with his doctors in Philadelphia last year.

Early in last year's playoffs, Laperriere got hit in the face with a puck.

He suffered a brain contusion and needed 70 stitches above his right eye.

Hoping to win his first Stanley Cup, the 37-year-old says he wasn't completely honest with the medical staff and came back to play in the semifinals.

"No way, no I lied to them about my symptoms because I wanted to play."

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Hockey's coat of many colours

By STEVE SIMMONS, QMI Agency May 10 2011

TORONTO – The changing face of hockey in this province made startling history on Saturday when three of the first six selections — four of the first 12 players picked — in the Ontario Hockey League priority draft were players of colour.

Nothing like this has ever happened before.

This coming at a time when Joel Ward is out-scoring the Sedin brothers in the Stanley Cup playoffs. This coming at a time when P.K. Subban and Jarome Iginla are among the most popular players in all of hockey and Chris Stewart is one of the game’s emerging power forwards.

“I didn’t even think about this until you brought it to my attention, but it is pretty remarkable,” said David Branch, commissioner of the OHL and of junior hockey in Canada. “I don’t tend to think about things like colour, but we did an online draft show and I saw the three Subban brothers (NHL’s P.K., OHL’s Malcolm and draft pick, Jordan) on the set together and I thought ‘I don’t think that’s ever happened before.’

“I don’t necessarily know why it’s happening or how it’s happened but I think it’s great for the game of hockey, great for the ethnic communities in this country. I think we all recognize the importance of reaching out and making our game as accessible as possible to all ethnic groups. I guess this shows it’s working.”

– Darnell Nurse, a lanky defenceman from the Don Mills Flyers, whose father Richard played receiver for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and whose uncle happens to be Donovan McNabb, was chosen third in the draft by Sault Ste. Marie.

– Jordan Subban, PK’s little brother, and a defenceman from the provincial champion Toronto Marlies, was the 5th pick in the draft, chosen like his brothers before him, by the Belleville Bulls.

– Nicholas Baptiste, who has been touted as the best minor hockey forward in Ottawa for years, was chosen fourth by the Sudbury Wolves.

– Stephen Harper of Burlington, who scored 38 goals in 55 games of AAA hockey, was selected 12th by the Erie Otters.

– And if next year’s draft was held today, consensus is that Joshua Ho-Sang of the Marlies, of Jamaican and Jewish descent, would be one of the first players selected.

“This is a very positive step for our game,” said Sherry Bassin, who has been around junior hockey for more than 35 years and admits that nothing like this has ever happened before. “I remember years ago, when one multi-cultural athlete would come to play hockey, that was a big story. Everybody talked about it. Now, I don’t know if this is a national thing but I know what’s happening in Ontario. The sport has become more multi-cultural and look at the quality of player we’re seeing.

“The game is part of the Canadian fabric and more than ever it’s represented by all kinds of Canadians, not just white ones. To me, it’s extremely positive to see the game looking more like our society, and I’m very excited about that, for the game and for the kids playing it.”

When Karl Subban, father to the hockey playing Subbans, was told about the OHL priority selection draft he reacted instantly. “I just said ‘Wow. That’s unbelievable.’

“When I started out with PK and I’d walk into an arena with my wife, we didn’t see too many black faces,” said Karl. “Now, when I’d go in with Jordan, we’d see many black faces. You can see the change, just in that short time. The game is growing in the black community and it’s growing in the ethnic community. And you see it with PK’s popularity, there’s so many kids watching the sport who want to be involved.

“In my neighbourhood in Etobicoke, there are a lot of East Indian kids around. I don’t have to read the newspaper or go on the internet to know what happened in the game last night. The kids all tell me.”

As principal of Brookview Middle School, in the difficult Jane and Finch area, Subban has instituted the Heroes Program, introducing and exposing less fortunate children to hockey. The results, to date, have been fantastic.

“It’s made a big difference, especially with self esteem,” said Subban. “We had this little guy at our school having difficulties and after PK won his second gold medal in Ottawa, he went to school and told me ‘I want to be like PK.’ Knowing where he’d come from, it was good for me to hear that. And you should see this kid now. How he’s changed. It’s all because of hockey. And when I heard today the game is growing, that made me feel even better.”

There is always the issue of cost at Rep hockey for families ethnic and otherwise, but Subban said that there’s something within the game that makes it accessible for everyone.

“There’s a spirit within the hockey community that helps out those in need,” said Subban. “I know it’s expensive. I know parents who have helped out, organizations, sponsors. People don’t seem to mind, they find a way to get kids to play if they want to play.

“And look what happens when you introduce the game to so many people? You see the results now.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Keefe has coaching chops, plus 30 thoughts

By Elliotte Friedman Posted: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 CBC Sports

It is the league that spawned the coaching careers of Bryan Murray, Jacques Martin, Bob Hartley and Doug MacLean. Last month, it sent another alumnus into the OHL as Todd Gill, who played 1,007 NHL games, joined the Kingston Frontenacs as head coach.

We're talking about the Central Canada Hockey League (formerly the Central Junior Hockey League) and the same team has won its last five championships.

That's the Pembroke Lumber Kings who, on Sunday, advanced to the Royal Bank Cup, emblematic of national junior A supremacy, and won it over the two-time defending champion Vernon Vipers.

It is the first time in 35 years a team from that league won the title, which used to be known as the Centennial Cup.

One man's fingerprints are everywhere. He is Sheldon Keefe – Pembroke's owner, president, governor, general manager and head coach. Keefe moved behind the bench for the 2006-07 season, the first in this record run.

Keefe's is a spectacular resume.

"Kids want to play there," said one person who knows the league very well. "He's done a great job and deserves a lot of credit.

"He gets the most out of his players. I don't doubt for a second that he could be an NHL coach."

Keefe could, in theory, follow Gill's route to the next level. Gill will continue to own the Brockville Braves while coaching Kingston. But Keefe's tremendous success comes with a cloud – he is a David Frost disciple and no one's sure if anyone will take a chance on him.

(Keefe did not respond to an interview request but, in fairness, I'm not certain of his travel plans home from Camrose, Alta., where the RBC Cup was played)

"Maybe he'll be judged on his own merits, not his past," said another observer.

Not yet, I don't think.

The controversial Frost claims he's no longer involved in Pembroke's operations, but the Lumber Kings are full of acolytes. Keefe is one, as are minority owner Larry Barron (he runs a hockey program in Laguna Niguel, Calif., the same city where Frost was discovered this season, plus there is a graduate of the program on the Pembroke roster) and assistant GM/assistant coach Shawn Cation.

There was at least one occasion during his pro career that Keefe was told he was good enough to play, but keeping Frost as an agent wasn't worth it to the organization. He refused to cut the chord.

No one is willing to go on the record about them simply because it's an aggravation to be avoided. One person suggested Keefe is more than content to stay in Pembroke. After all, he's happy, he's successful, he's making money and he doesn't have to face too much of this scrutiny.

That's certainly the safe route.

If he wants to move up, he's probably going to have to distance himself from all of them.

30 THOUGHTS

1) The San Jose Sharks do not discuss front office moves, but hearing Doug Wilson signed a five-year contract extension at some point this season.

2) Known Uptown Hockey agents Don & Todd Reynolds for a long time. Never seen the slightest evidence of anything sinister. Very nice, mild people. I was as astonished as anyone that Todd tweeted Monday: "Very sad to read Sean Avery's misguided support of same-gender 'marriage'. Legal or not, it will always be wrong." It's damaging. Others will use this to poach. "I'm willing to accept that," Todd said Monday night. "I have to stand up for what I believe in." It's a passionate debate with a lack of intelligent reaction on both sides. Will players leave Uptown to avoid aggravation?

3) Could Reynolds represent a player who took Avery's stand? "If this was their personal opinion, yes," Todd said. "But if something was being done in a public position to promote or lobby legislation to change laws … we would have to sit down and discuss if we should sever our relationship."

4) Interesting: Word is The Raine Group, which is handling the sale of the Atlanta Thrashers for Atlanta Spirit LLC, is telling prospective buyers the team can be moved because having those dates available for other events (ie. concerts) is a better financial option than hockey. Neither a phone call nor a follow-up email were returned by 10 p.m. ET Monday.

5) Speaking of moves, wanted to follow up on my Shane Doan note of a two weeks ago. I stated that if the Phoenix Coyotes moved to Winnipeg, it is believed something would be worked out for Doan to go elsewhere. It is not an anti-Manitoba thing. It is an understanding that his family is strongly tied to the U.S. southwest. Of course, it doesn't look like an issue now.

6) If I was Paul Holmgren, I'd ask Mike Richards if he wanted to drop the "C" for an "A" because the interaction between Richards and the Philly media is painful to watch. Richards takes the questions very personally and everyone might be better off if he did it less often and simply concentrated on playing. This move happened years ago with Eric Desjardins and Keith Primeau and it can happen again with Richards and Chris Pronger.

7) After Philly's elimination, asked Richards if he was bothered by an injury. He said no. Now comes news about a wrist problem that prevented him from taking faceoffs, although he took more than any Flyer except Claude Giroux. The idea that he's overrated is outrageous. Key component on a Memorial Cup champion and Olympic gold medallist.

8) Richards can use Ryan Kesler as proof that you don't need the "C" to be a difference maker and leader.

9) Not sure the Flyers need to go out and get another goalie. Sergei Bobrovsky had a pretty good year for a guy who had zero North American experience and didn't know the language. Would've been better if Philly stuck with him like the Washington Capitals did with Michal Neuvirth. Anyway, better Bobrovsky than wasting money on Ilya Bryzgalov.

10) Think Patrick Marleau is a far better player than he gets credit for. But if he can't go to another level after being called "gutless" by Jeremy Roenick, does he prove Roenick's point?

11) Mathieu Darche told a great story about Kevin Dineen, who coached him in 2008-09. Darche said Dineen told his players: "You will not dive here. I don't care if you get a penalty or not. If you do it, I won't play you." Wish more coaches had the same philosophy.

12) If I were the Vancouver Canucks, I would be worried about this – Chris Kelly may have deserved a penalty, but because Roman Hamrlik was diving so often, there was no call. Big goal to give up in a Game 7.

13) Can we please stop saying "minor concussion?" No such thing.

14) Knew a guy who played Atlantic University hockey. Against UPEI, his coach said: "I don't care about anybody else. We've got to stop Joel Ward." Wonder if Alain Vigneault made the same speech for Game 6.

15) When I see the Nashville Predators, I see what Washington's missing – a hunger, a sense of urgency. If you could combine the Capitals roster with the Predators' ferocity, you'd have a hell of a team.

16) Washington's needs: speed on the defence and among the bottom six forwards; a major core player removed to shake up the group; and the addition of an aggressive, tenacious Top 6 forward (really don't like to say they need a North American up front, so let's just say a player with a "North American" attitude).

17) Alex Semin or Mike Green? One or the other, not both. Shake up your too comfortable core.

18) If you're a Capitals fan and have access to NHL.com's archive, go to the last 30 seconds of Game 3 (for those who can't see it, Ovechkin causes an offside by making an extra move while his teammates are skating hard towards the offensive zone). In the words of one long-time NHLer, "Alexander Ovechkin won't be a winner until he learns to use his teammates properly there." And this is someone who considers himself a fan.

19) Rick Nash told reporters covering the Worlds he'd "be out of a job if I didn't finish those hits" after crushing Sweden's Mikael Backlund. Yeah, not so much. I can think of a few teams who might still be interested even if he passed up that one.

20) Flyers defenceman Danny Syvret played the second round with an eyelid that wouldn't close. Shingles led to a form of Bell's Palsy on the right side of his face, which paralyzed it. He showed me how he had to manually close the eye or irrigate it with drops. Minor grossness.

21) The Boston Bruins kept Tyler Seguin out of the lineup because "he isn't ready for this yet," one member of the organization said last week. With Patrice Bergeron out, Seguin gets his chance. Boston still believes he will be a terrific player, but something to look out for his how much he carries the puck.

There is a feeling he gets rid of it too quickly because he's not yet comfortable.

22) An example of what the Bruins do so well? Look at Nathan Horton's Game 5 winner versus Montreal. Because so many teams want defenders "fronting" and blocking shots, Boston's forwards sneak behind to get rebounds and pucks that get through. Hamrlik of the Canadiens could do a better job on the battle, but giving up position is the risk you take when you play that style.

23) No deadline-ish acquisition made a more seamless adjustment than Eric Brewer in Tampa. Brewer said that rookie head coach Guy Boucher rarely talked to him the first 10 days, aside from an arrival welcome and general "How are you?" inquiries. All of the system stuff was left to assistant Daniel Lacroix because they did not want to overload him. Interesting approach.

24) Tampa beat San Jose to Brewer.

25) Tim Thomas continues to fiddle with the bars on his mask. He moved the two covering his nose even closer during the season and will try to make them thinner in the summer. Looks like a stick could get through to the eyes, but he says no, it's been tested.

26) Brad Marchand's nickname is "Squirrel." How'd he get that? "We were playing an AHL game in Hershey," he said last week. "The building was quiet during the anthem and one guy yelled out I was like a squirrel." Teammate Dan Lacouture heard it and it stuck.

27) Marchand's father, Kevin, played for the late Donnie Matheson as a junior in Moncton. He thinks that's a major reason Matheson, who worked for both organizations, convinced the Wildcats and the Bruins to draft Brad.

28) When in Carolina, Flyers assistant coach Kevin McCarthy played a huge role in developing Dennis Seidenberg into an underrated but really good NHL defenceman. Last week, McCarthy probably regretted it.

29) Love that Shane O'Brien is on Twitter and Claude Giroux is using a new website to raise money for a hospital in his hometown of Hearst, Ont. Only question: Is the timing good? Should these be launched during the playoffs?

30) Read Matt Kalman's 100 Things Bruins Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die during the first round. Good read, unless you cheer for the Canadiens.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Boogaard's brain reportedly donated for research
Hockey world searches for answers in forward's death

By Reuters May 14 2011

TORONTO – The hockey world was digesting the sudden death of New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard with many starting to wonder whether it was possibly linked to a fight-filled National Hockey League career.

The 28-year-old forward, one of the game’s most feared fighters who was nicknamed “The Boogeyman,” was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment on Friday. The cause of death has not been determined but foul play is not suspected.

While autopsy reports are not expected for at least two weeks, sports talk shows and Twitter were abuzz on Saturday with debate about whether Boogaard’s role as a hockey tough guy might have been a factor in his death.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that Boogaard’s family had donated the player’s brain to Boston University researchers who are studying brain disease in athletes.

“The news that we have lost someone so young and so strong leaves everyone in the National Hockey League stunned and saddened,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman in a statement.

“The NHL family sends its deepest condolences to all who knew and loved Derek Boogaard, to those who played and worked with him and to everyone who enjoyed watching him compete.”

Boogaard, who was selected in the seventh round of the 2001 NHL Draft, spent five seasons with the Minnesota Wild starting in 2005 before signing a four-year deal with the Rangers in July 2010.

At 6-foot-7 (2-metre) and 265 lb (120-kg), Boogaard was one of the NHL’s most feared fighters, known more for his fists than his scoring finesse. In 277 career games, he scored only three goals but accumulated 598 minutes in penalties.

His final game was in December where he suffered a shoulder injury and a concussion during a fight.

Concussions have been sports hot button issue in recent months, particularly in the NHL.

Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby, the league’s biggest name, missed the finals months of the 2010-11 season after he sustained a concussion in January.

Head trauma

Earlier this year, the devastating effects of repeated head trauma were highlighted by a post-mortem examination on the brain of Bob Probert, one of hockey’s most famous brawlers.

The results showed Probert suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative disease similar to Alzheimer’s that is thought to be caused by repeated blows to the head.

Tributes from around the hockey community poured in as word of Boogaard’s death spread.

Before the start of Game One of the Eastern conference final between the Boston Bruins and Tampa Bay Lightning on Saturday, fan observed a moment of silence.

“It was devastating news,” said Rangers Marian Gaborik, who was team mate of Boogaard’s in Minnesota and New York. “He was one of the very best at what he did.

“Every team would have loved to have him, whether on the ice or off the ice as a great team mate.“

“He’s just the type guy who would be there for you whenever you needed him.“

For all his ferociousness on the ice, Boogaard was described as a “big teddy bear“ away from the rink donating his time to charitable causes.

In New York, he set up “Boogaard’s Booguardians“ and hosted military families at Rangers home games.

Georges Laraque, the Montreal Canadiens enforcer and another member of the NHL’s fight club, rated Boogaard as the one of the best at his craft, who enjoyed his work.

“He’s the toughest guy in the league,“ Laraque told the Toronto Star. “There’s pressure that comes with that. But he was ready to take it.

“Contrary to a lot of other guys, he likes fighting and he’s mean and tough.

“He was going to be a big threat, he was going to be ready. You don’t think when you’re 28 years old something like that was going to happen. It was a total shock to me.“

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Taking brain injuries Head On

Ian Busby, Calgary Sun Sunday, May 15, 2011

Kerry Goulet was banging his head against a wall talking about concussions for nine years before a breakthrough arrived.

It took a fallen star for head injuries to get major attention, but at least something positive has come from Sidney Crosby’s concussion.

Goulet, the founder of Stopconcussions.com — along with former NHLer Keith Primeau — has educated the public about head injuries since leaving pro hockey with his own problems.

But it wasn’t until the Pittsburgh Penguins captain got rattled Jan. 1 that a bigger spotlight arrived.

Crosby took a shot to the head but kept playing, eventually suffering a second hit four days later that knocked him out for the 2010-11 NHL season.

When Goulet spoke Sunday at Head On: The Sport Injury Prevention Convention at the University of Calgary, his No. 1 message is players need to come clean after taking head blows.

No matter how bad Crosby seemed at the time — his groggy words were caught by HBO cameras — nobody kept him from playing again.

“Keith and I were together, and we both said, ‘How can they allow him to go back on the ice?’ ” Goulet said.

“There is no way you couldn’t have seen he had brain abnormality at that time.

“If there is any doubt, they don’t play. It’s difficult to tell an athlete he won’t play. But if we keep doing this, we will keep on damaging brains, and it’s irreparable. Once it’s broken, it’s not coming back.”

Now there is another high-profile case shedding light on the problem, an issue former professional wrestler and Harvard football player Chris Nowinski has championed since starting the Sports Legacy Institute in 2007.

NHL tough-guy Derek Boogaard, 28, died tragically Friday, and his family is donating his brain to the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, where Nowinski is a co-director.

This is the same group that diagnosed enforcers Reggie Fleming and Bob Probert as having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Nowinski spoke Sunday at the Calgary Bulldogs Football Association seminar about how CTE is diagnosed, using his own repeated ignorance about concussions as an example.

There are several examples of football players whose suicides are related head blows throughout their careers, but it wasn’t until their brains were studied that the damage was fully revealed.

“It seems unethical we haven’t been telling athletes about this, but we haven’t,” Nowinski said. “The status quo has to change. The evidence we have in our lab says we did things wrong. We need radical change to fix the future.

“The legacy donors have provided the proof the world need to take this more seriously. They have changed people’s minds.”

As a former football player, Nowinski is trying to educate coaches, parents and players about how to avoid unnecessary head hits, especially in practice.

Children are much more easy concussed than adults, and Nowinski illustrated his point by showing two young football players knocking helmets in a pointless drill.

“My best advice: Stop hitting kids in the head,” Nowinski said.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Researchers will examine Boogaard's brain

From Gregg Drinnan's "Taking Note" blog May 15, 2011

Three for the price of one:

There can be no tougher time for parents than when faced with the death of one of their children.

But that is the situation faced since Friday by Joanne and Len Boogaard, whose 28-year-old son, Derek, was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment by his two brothers.

Derek, who grew up in Regina and for whom a memorial service will be in the Saskatchewan capital on Saturday, was 6-foot-7 and 260 pounds. He played five seasons with the NHL’s Minnesota Wild, and had just completed the first year of a four-year, US$6.5-million contract with the New York Rangers.

However, he hadn’t played since Dec. 9 when, in a game against the Senators in Ottawa, he ended up concussed after a fight with Matt Carkner.

If you’re a hockey fan, you know that Boogaard was an enforcer.

And it just might be that his death becomes something of a tipping point. That’s because, as Michael Russo of the Minneapolis StarTribune reported immediately after it happened, Boogaard’s parents signed papers Saturday afternoon that will allow their son’s brain to be studied by researchers at Boston University.

This doesn’t mean, or even infer, that brain trauma had anything to do with Boogaard’s death, the cause of which won’t be known for a while, as toxicology tests have yet to be completed. An autopsy was done Saturday but results have yet to be released.

This, of course, is all about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), brain degeneration that has been found in a number of ex-football players as well as former NHL tough guys Reggie Fleming and Bob Probert.

This is about scientists and researchers trying to learn about damage that may be caused by blows to the heads of young athletes.
“Derek loved sports and obviously in particular hockey,” Boogaard’s brother, Ryan, told Russo, “so we believe Derek would have liked to assist with research on a matter that had affected him later on in his career.”

According to the website hockeyfights.com, Boogaard had 184 fights from 1999-2000 through that bout with Carkner.
Think about that for a moment and try to imagine how many headshots he absorbed.

Of those bouts, 64 were in the NHL, 48 in the AHL and 70 were in 174 regular-season WHL games, where he played with the Regina Pats, Prince George Cougars and Medicine Hat Tigers.

While many hockey leagues, including the Ontario and Quebec Major Junior leagues, have rules prohibiting headshots, the WHL does not.

That was never more in evidence than during the recently completed championship final between the Kootenay Ice and Portland Winterhawks. Portland forward Riley Boychuk and Kootenay defenceman James Martin both received major penalties for hits that appeared to be high. However, neither player was suspended by the WHL.

Writer Jeff Bromley, who attended games in Cranbrook on behalf of the Cranbrook Daily Townsman, wrote on his blog: “The explanation I was given (for no suspensions) is that the WHL has yet to adopt a check-to-the-head rule like the NHL and the OHL or Q. It will likely be put in place over the summer but, as of now, it’s not there.”

It is shameful that the WHL, whose players suffered more than 100 concussions this season, doesn’t prohibit such hits. When it is addressed, presumably at the annual meeting in June, perhaps the WHL will show some real forward thinking and ban headshots and fighting.

And, then again, maybe not.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Two compassionate Wild fans, and the power of Facebook, create a special night for the Boogaards

Posted by: Michael Russo May 16, 2011

This is Michael Russo's 16th year covering the National Hockey League. He's covered the Minnesota Wild for the Star Tribune since 2005 following 10 years of covering the Florida Panthers for the Sun-Sentinel. Michael uses “Russo’s Rants” to feed a wide-ranging hockey-centric discussion with readers, and “Russo Radio” can be heard weekly on 1500 ESPN.

The Boogaard family has sat inside Xcel Energy Center many times. They've watched a gazillion games.

It's safe they knew just how many in Minnesota adored their son, Derek Boogaard. But in case just a little part of them had forgotten, more than 300 Wild fans so incredibly came down to the X tonight to show the Boogaards how much they were also wounded by this horrible loss. I left to go write after the formal part of the memorial was over, but I heard from many that there was a steady stream of fans still arriving well past 8 p.m. to pay their respects.

Derek Boogaard wasn't the best skater, he wasn't the best stick-handler (I can hear Boogaard now say, "Uhhh, Roose, I … can't stick-handle"), he wasn't the best shooter.

But everybody loved Boogey. He was the underdog, the guy who had to work excruciatingly hard just to make it to the NHL, the guy who you could see playing in your beer league, the guy who excited every paying customer every single time with a good scrap.

As Wes Walz eloquently said tonight, "We needed Derek in the lineup to protect and take care of us. I can tell you a lot of guys on our bench grew an inch or two and were a lot braver when Derek was in the lineup."

Fans root for that. But there was obviously more. There was just something about Boogey — that personality, that humor, that obvious humanity.

Fans picked up on that right away.

Chuck Fletcher and Walz talked a lot about that side of Boogaard at tonight's incredible memorial that was completely, utterly, 100 percent the creation of two young Wild fans I'll get more into in a moment.

Fletcher talked about how every single time he saw Boogaard walk by a line of kids, he'd stop to sign autographs, take pictures, chat. "Nothing was more important," Fletcher said.

Walz talked about how often Boogaard, without anybody knowing like TV cameras and reporters, would visit the Children's Hospital.

At that moment, a memory popped in my head.

In April 2009, about a week after GM Doug Risebrough was fired, Risebrough held his press availability at Tom Reid's. The presser ended, I walked outside to call my editor and discuss what was said and find out what my space was (how much I could write).

A black SUV pulls up to me, I look up and Boogaard's in the passenger seat. Sticking out the window is his entire right arm in what had to be the most uncomfortable contraption I've ever seen.

Boogaard had literally just gotten out of the operating room from offseason shoulder surgery. He didn't go home. He asked to be driven to Tom Reid's.

Boogaard asked me if I could do him a favor, go back inside and get Risebrough for him. Risebrough came out, I stepped away and you could just see how touched Risebrough was.

You see, Boogaard knew wholeheartedly that he owed his NHL career to Risebrough. He just wanted to tell Risebrough face-to-face, "Thank you, and I'm so sorry" — regardless of the fact that he was in pain and woozy.

This was the real Boogaard, not the person who rearranged faces for a living.

Fans showed their appreciation tonight during so many touching ways, I can't even begin to describe. It was just such a sad thing to see the torment Boogaard's family was going through. After all, Derek had passed away just 48 hours before.

But the family was so touched that Wild fans had organized this memorial, they felt it was incumbent upon them to show. It had to be therapeutic, too.

His mother, Joanne, one of the nicest people ever, began crying the second she saw how many fans were in the lobby of the X. She was joined by Derek's father, Len, brothers Aaron and Ryan, sister, Krysten, half-brother, Curtis, Fletcher, former Wild teammates Brent Burns, Andrew Brunette, Niklas Backstrom, Nick Schultz, Stephane Veilleux, Wes Walz and the entire Wild training staff. There were several other friends and family, including his friend and agent Tobin Wright and boxing and martial arts trainer, Jeremy Clark.

Many in the Wild’s front office and scouting staff also attended, as did former Wild assistant GM Tommy Thompson, former director of hockey operations Chris Snow and former scout Todd Woodcroft.

The marquee video boards on the sides of the outside of the arena had scrolling pictures of Boogaard, inside there was video of Boogaard on a reel, there were pictures and flowers and signs.

This was all the brainchild of 19-year-old Katie Haag of St. Francis and 18-year-old Shelby Leske of Hutchinson.

This started with a simple Facebook "event" the night Boogaard died. They didn't have permission. They didn't ask if the building was available. They just knew in their heart what they had to do, and they did it.

It grew and grew. I was even a little squeamish about whether or not I was supposed to promote it. After all, the Wild wasn't putting it on and the family didn't know about it and they were mourning.

But this morning, Ryan Boogaard texted me that the family was going, and I instantly got it up on our site.

"Derek’s what made me love the game," said Leske.

"When Shelby texted me that he died, my eyes instantly shot up to the picture of Boogaard on my wall. I'm just like, 'he's too young,'" Haag said, trying to catch her breath. "His career was just starting, and I know all about the charities he did. All those kids loved him so much.

"I had no idea this was going to end up this big at all, which I’m glad. I’m not embarrassed by it at all. I’m proud. We were walking outside looking at all the news crews, and we said, 'This happened from 18- and 19-year-old girls."

It was an amazing gift to the family. I got to talk to his family after the event for awhile, and they were so genuinely touched.

I feel compelled to share with you the transcipt of what the family said tonight at the memorial. It began with Aaron, but the grief was too much. So Krysten began, and Ryan stepped in.

I can't even explain how touching a scene this was to witness.

Krysten: On behalf of our entire family and all of Derek’s teammates from this year and year’s past, we want to say thank you for taking the time to come here and honor a man who was a son, a brother, a friend and teammate.

We know that Derek would want to thank the Minnesota Wild for allowing us to have this service here. The Wild gave Derek his first chance in believing in him against all odds and that he could provide contribution to the team. We know he would thank them for that. Secondly, we know Derek would thank the New York Rangers for the care they gave to him, the respect they showed him and the opportunity they provided him. And to all his teammates on all his teams, we know it was Derek’s opinion that you thought he was your comfort. In reality, everyday you guys gave Derek a reason to come to work.

Above all else, Derek put other people ahead of himself. Selfless in his hockey and selfless in his personal life. Derek’s life has been dedicated to helping other people first. Where there is a teammate in trouble on or off the ice, where there was a friend in need of a sympathetic ear or someone he met on the street, Derek always made that situation a priority. Judging by how many people have written our family and judging by the impact that Derek has had on our lives and everyone here tonight, it is obvious how much he has meant to a lot of people.

Derek is known everywhere he goes as larger than life, but in his heart, he is an everyman. The phrase we have most often seen written lately by his colleagues across the country, the hockey world and from other people that have meant the most to him, the fans, Derek was known as a ‘teddy bear.’

Our family couldn’t agree more with this assessment, but what is a teddy bear? A teddy bear is first and foremost a source of comfort , and having heard from his teammates, we know how much a comfort Derek provided on the ice. Secondly a teddy bear is dependable. Derek was dependable to a fault. You could depend on him for anything you needed at any time. Your priority became his priority.

Ryan: Thirdly, teddy bears are usually big, and while he couldn’t admit it, cuddly. You wouldn’t think of Derek as cuddly, but there wasn’t a person in our lives that had more love to give and more love to receive. Lastly, teddy bears are loyal. They’re a constant reminder of what is good in our lives. Love, trust, friendship and selflessness. Teddy bears give but don’t ask in return, and this is unconditional. There are no demands in return. Derek was a teddy bear, and always will be our teddy bear.

We aren’t here to talk about Derek’s hockey career because his hockey was just a seasonal thing for us. It was just an aspect of what he did, who he was. We’re here because we have lost a son, a brother, a role model and a friend. Derek quietly in his community life, not wanting the attention usually associated with these efforts, preferred to just roll up his sleeves and get down to business much like his work on the ice. This is how we choose to remember him and ask that you do the same. We know we will never forget who Derek was and who he is. We know that every friend he made and every teammate he played with will say the same thing about Derek.

Derek’s legacy will live with us every day. And for any of you that knows him or who have met him, no matter how briefly, we know that you too will be touched by the light that was Derek. While this light was extinguished too early, it will continue to burn strong for all of us that were privileged enough to know him and love him.

I've gotten a lot of emails and tweets this week asking how Brent Burns and Cal Clutterbuck were doing. I didn't want to bother Burns tonight because he was visibly down in the dumps, but I did get to talk to Clutterbuck on the phone. He's home in Ontario.

Clutterbuck was one of Boogaard’s closest friends when he played for the Wild. He returned from the World Championships in Slovakia, turned on his phone and was hit with the horrifying news.

“To me, it still feels kind of like a story. It seems like it really didn’t happen,” Clutterbuck said. “When I first got there, I was a young rookie and I had few conversations with the guys. But I sat besides Boogey in the room and I did things with him outside of hockey.

“He was fun to talk to every day. Just nothing things. We talked about nothing, and that was the best part.”

Anyway, that was a longer blog than I anticipated. It's late. Good night everyone.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

University sports look to unlock potential

ALLAN MAKI Calgary— From Monday's Globe and Mail Published Sunday, May. 15, 2011

Some see sparse crowds and meagre media coverage and question the value of Canadian university sports. Doug Mitchell sees the same things and calls it untapped potential.

As one of the most influential supporters of Canadian Interuniversity Sport, Mitchell believes more can be done to enhance what “is probably the least known thing in the country, great athletes and great competition.” To heighten that awareness, the Calgary lawyer and founder of the Borden Ladner Gervais Awards for the country’s top university athletes is all for a two-tiered system of competing schools, freer use of scholarships and strong leadership – necessary steps for CIS growth.

“There are more colleges becoming universities in B.C. [UBC-Okanagan, Thompson Rivers] and Mount Royal have become a university here. I’ve been told Grant MacEwan [in Edmonton] wants to come into Canada West,” Mitchell said of the changing Canada West landscape. “We could have teams coming up [to a first division] or falling back. It could be like soccer in the U.K.”

The idea of operating a two-tiered athletic system has been hotly debated in recent years. Interest in the concept spiked again when the University of British Columbia considered switching to the National Collegiate Athletic Conference and playing in the Division II Great Northwestern Athletic Conference – for a higher class of opposition, it argued.

Just last month, though, UBC president Stephen Toope announced his school would be staying in the Canada West Universities Athletic Association and that it “will join four other large universities in the conference to institute a two-tiered competition system beginning in 2012-13.”

How that happens remains unknown. Canada West made the decision two years ago to split into two conferences and has formed a committee of university presidents and athletic directors to decide how best to do that. Given the many variables involved – the number of schools, their differing athletic departments and student enrolments – the two-association plan likely won’t be determined and instituted until 2013-14.

“We want to take the lead [nationally],” Canada West president Sandy Slavin said. “We’re doing this because we’re having so much growth in Western Canada.”

As for the athletes’ financial awards, UBC asked for more flexibility “in how scholarships can be awarded within teams, while maintaining an overall [financial] cap,” Toope said. Mitchell, a UBC law school graduate and a former Thunderbirds football player, is in agreement and disagreement with his alma mater.

“I was asked if I’d send a letter approving [UBC’s move to the NCAA]. There was a report prepared and I thought it was very poorly done,” Mitchell said. “It said UBC needs better competition. My research showed the last national championship [for UBC] was in 1997 in football. It’s been 40 years in men’s hockey, 38 years in men’s basketball, 27 years in men’s volleyball. I’ve been outspoken against moving. I got crossed off a few Christmas card lists at UBC.”

Mitchell, however, approves of the two-tiered system coupled with flexible scholarships because it could lead to “a Sweet 16 format, a regional championship and national championship in all the major sports.” He sees that happening in partnership with a national sports network – beyond TSN’s coverage of football’s Vanier Cup – and “a very thorough marketing campaign and have the universities buy into it.”

He doesn’t believe the CIS will experience the same abuses and violations that regularly jar the NCAA.

“Some people are worried that would lead to athletes having degrees in basket weaving but I don’t they should ever touch the eligibility [standards]. The athletes still have to qualify academically to play,” he said, noting there are universities now that don’t use the maximum amount of scholarship dollars available to them. (Ironically, UBC’s own 2011 consultation document showed it awarded just 11 per cent of the CIS scholarship limit.)

The CIS will be front and centre Monday night when BLG presents its awards for the 19th consecutive year. The male and female winners are acknowledged for their athleticism, leadership and sportsmanship and are given a $10,000 postgraduate scholarship. The recipients are chosen by an independent board. Mitchell can see a similar approach working for the CIS.

“I think there should be a group of business people as a sounding board to provide assistance and ideas. There are a lot of former athletes who are successful in various fields. They can help with sponsorships and getting more corporate involvement,” Mitchell said.

“[University athletics] has such immense potential. It needs someone to pull it together. Will it be easy? No, it won’t. But there’s an advantage to building university spirit and turning out good people, and you can do it through sports.”

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Radical changes needed to stop concussions: expert

By Kristen Odland, Calgary Herald May 16, 2011

A researcher from the Boston University School of Medicine said radical change needs to happen in concussion prevention.

“We’re not having very big conversations about (concussion prevention) and part of that needs to come from the top down in terms of rule changes, policy changes, training changes,” said Chris Nowinski, a leading expert in concussions, who spoke Sunday to a gathering during the Head On Sport Head Injury Prevention Convention at the University of Calgary. “Luckily, we are having conversations with the bodies that are in charge of those things.

“It’s education.”

Nowinski, a Harvard graduate and former WWE wrestler, has been educating the masses on concussion issues. He’s the co-founder and president of the Sports Legacy Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to sports concussions, and the co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University. Researchers there have set up a brain bank to investigate athletes for chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease which causes cognitive decline, behavioural abnormalities including depression, and dementia.

The post-mortem analysis of brain tissue reveals concussions and non-concussive blows could both be linked to the disease. About 400 athletes have agreed to donate their brains to the research facility when they die.

“It doesn’t necessarily correlate to concussions right now, but that’s because we haven’t historically diagnosed them,” Nowinski said. “It appears to be correlated to total brain trauma. We know that every hit to the head and every symptom counts.”

On Sunday, the Sports Legacy Institute received word that the family of National Hockey League enforcer Derek Boogaard has donated his brain to the institution. Due to legal reasons, Nowinski couldn’t speculate on Boogaard’s situation.

Boogaard, who spent his first five seasons with the Minnesota Wild, was limited to 22 games last season with the New York Rangers due to a concussion and shoulder injury. He was found dead in his Minneapolis apartment Friday.

Concussion and spinal injury activist Kerry Goulet, who works alongside former NHLer Keith Primeau, told the audience Boogaard’s family made the right decision in donating his brain to science.

“What a horrible, tragic incident that has happened,” said Goulet, who suffered depression and the effects of concussions during a 16-year professional hockey career in Germany. “It brings back memories you just don’t want to think about. It’s a grieving time for the family; all of us a community of hockey and sports people are I’m sure sending out their regards for the family.

“And, hopefully, through his death and if it is in fact that it is something that has been dealt to him through concussion and possibly through the CTE situation, we learn from it.”

Two cases of CTE in the NHL have been discovered.

Reggie Fleming died in 2009 at age 73 with dementia. Bob Probert, a 16-year veteran who died last summer after his heart gave out while he was fishing, suffered at least three concussions and struggled with substance abuse. He began to show signs of CTE in his 40s, such as memory loss and behavioural problems.

Both players were fighters.

The findings have fuelled the debate surrounding the need for rule changes in hockey, which largely came to the forefront when Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby was sidelined with concussion symptoms this season.

“We knew it was real. I’ve been doing this for nine years and all of a sudden, now that Crosby’s gone out of the game with a concussion, we take it really seriously,” Goulet added. “People like Chris have been able to build an infrastructure for us to educate and hopefully make a difference in this thing.”

Nowinski was speaking in Calgary along with Goulet, Calgary Stampeders medical services director Pat Clayton, Dr. Carolyn Emery, professor of pediatric rehabilitation at the University of Calgary, and Brady Greening, the director of health services and head athletic therapist at the Edge School.

All speakers alluded to the fact that children are much more susceptible to concussions. Nowinski said because their brains are developing, they are more sensitive to the excitotoxic shock of a concussion. Other factors are weak necks and torsos that can’t distribute force of the body well, poor equipment, exposure to coaches of various levels of training, and have poor language skills to communicate concussion symptoms.

Helmets are one element in prevention, according to Nowinski, but rule and culture changes also need to be enforced.

“When we think about the problem with kids and playing contact sports,” explained Nowinski. “We have to start thinking about the differences between adults and kids.

“If we’re concerned about adults, we should be really, really, worried about kids.”

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[hockeygod]

Will tragic death lead to change?

By ROB LONGLEY, QMI Agency May 17, 2011

So dominant was Derek Boogaard as an NHL enforcer that in life he might have been altering the role of fighting in the game.

But in death, could the former Minnesota Wild and New York Rangers pugilist tragically enact the most profound changes yet?

With news that Boogaard's family has donated his brain to the Boston University School of Medicine to determine if or how his role as a professional fighter contributed to his death, the hockey world will anxiously await the results.

Discovered unconscious and not breathing in his Minneapolis apartment on Friday evening, the Boogaard tragedy has sent shock waves throughout the league.

Hundreds of fans gathered at the Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minn., on Sunday evening to honour a young man who was a huge fan favourite during his five seasons there. Teammates past and present praised the Saskatchewan native as a gentle giant, a man who was dramatically different off the ice.

While it is premature to link Boogaard's tragic death with his career as an enforcer — and anyone doing so is using it to shamelessly further their anti-fighting stance — the family's action at least acknowledges concern that it is a possibility.

And if the results of either the study or the autopsy show that his life as an enforcer led directly to his death, how will the NHL react?

Boston U has been a world leader in evaluating degenerative brain disease in athletes as an aftershock of concussions. Most recently, the university studied the late Bob Probert and determined there was evidence of such a condition, even though the long-time NHL enforcer's official cause of death was heart related.

"Derek loved sports and obviously in particular hockey, so we believe Derek would have liked to assist with research on a matter that had affected him later on in his career," his brother, Ryan, told the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Already, it seems that Boogaard's death might become a major polarizing event in the great hockey fighting debate.

There is a reason the 28-year-old was one of the most popular Wild players and that his jersey was often the team's top seller and it had nothing to do with his community service activities.

Signed by the New York Rangers in the off-season, Boogaard e role that a majority of hockey fans seem to relish while on Broadway. By Sunday evening, video of that final fight of his career had more than 132,000 hits on Youtube.

In that relatively short bout against Ottawa's Matt Carkner, Boogaard appears to be stunned early by a big right hand to the jaw area. The 70th fight of his NHL career (almost one out of every four of his 277 games) ended when he was wrestled to the ice head-first by Carkner. Boogaard also suffered a shoulder injury in that Dec. 8 fight but was reported to be bothered by headaches months later.

HOT-BUTTON ISSUE

As concussions have become the NHL's hot-button issue, Boogaard is not alone among designated enforcers with lingering effects of a head injury related to a fight.

The Toronto Maple Leafs' Colton Orr missed the last 36 games of the 2010-11 season after getting injured in a fight with Anaheim's George Parros on Jan. 20. Towards the end of the season, the Leafs said they were being extra cautious with Orr's recovery but there has been no public indication that he was close to returning.

Boogaard, meanwhile, had become one of the NHL's most feared fighters to the point where his reputation and 6-foot- 7, 265-pound frame could discourage potential foes.

"He scared the hell out of me," Bruins enforcer Shawn Thornton told the Providence Journal prior to Game 1 of the Eastern Conference final against the Tampa Lightning.

"He was a big man. There's a lot of guys who do this job, and he was definitely at the top of the list for guys you didn't want to run into. If you had to, you had to, but he had the potential to hurt you. He was feared and arguably the toughest guy in the league."

Sunday night in Minnesota, Boogaard's life and career was celebrated. Only time and medical analysis will determine how both are remembered.

Dean
M.Ed (Coaching)
Ch.P.C. (Chartered Professional Coach)
Game Intelligence Training
"Great education depends on great teaching."

[Author]

Posts