[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by powderjunkie

I don't think he would try to mastermind some ruse to trick the doctor into thinking he was concussed.

The most obvious answer, as clearly tiptoed around in the order by Bettman, was that Wideman exaggerated his symptoms to the doctor to ensure that he was diagnosed with a concussion and the doctors were glad to accept it because that's pretty much their job as the expert witnesses for the NHLPA. I'm not suggesting that Wideman wasn't concussed, or that he thought he wasn't concussed, just that he knew the right answers to give to ensure that he got the correct diagnosis from the doctors when interviewed 4 days after the event. By telling the experts that he vaguely remembers what happened, saying that he was was woozy despite his previous claim etc. He knew the experts would testify that he was concussed (which I'm not arguing against) and explain away his behaviour. Had he told them the same story he told the media, they may not have been so quick to diagnosis him with concussion and the behavioural symptoms that come with it.

Those conclusions were based on little more than Mr. Wideman's own
subjective report of concussion symptoms that he may or may not have actually experienced.

Rather, both were retained by the NHLPA (for whom each
has performed services for many years) for the purpose of opining as to what his mental and/or physical
state was at the time of the incident in question. In order to do so, they relied on remote, brief
interviews with Mr. Wideman conducted several days after the incident (at a time when he was well
aware that he was the subject of an imminent supplementary discipline hearing) and their own review
of the video footage.

And. . . you didn't do anything to kind of test out whether what he was telling
you might not be the case, did you?
A. That's correct.
Q. You simply accepted it at face value?
A. Yes.
15
Q. And you would agree with me that Mr. Wideman certainly had, at least
potentially, the motive to exaggerate his symptoms in order to obtain a report that
said he wasn't responsible for his actions, that's at least a possibility, isn't it?
A. It's a possibility.
. . and you didn't discuss that in your report, did you?
A. No. (Tr. 137-138, 141)

As noted above, Drs. Comper and Kutcher both simply took what Mr.
Wideman told them at face value. They could have, but did not, seek to corroborate his
statements by speaking with the Club's medical trainer, who was not consulted by either Dr.
Comper or Dr. Kutcher or asked by the NHLPA to testify at the hearing about Mr. Wideman's
supposed "confusional state.

Dr. Kutcher testified that he based his opinion, in part, on the fact that Mr. Wideman told him
that he "vaguely remembers skating to the bench. He remembers some incident occurring, but
he does not recall who he hit [or] how he hit the individual. " (Tr. 203) In fact, however, at the
hearing, Mr. Wideman testified that he does recall colliding with the linesman and that he
became aware it was going to occur prior to contact being made. (Tr. 86)

do note,
however, that Mr. Wideman's testimony on this point (which, like the rest of what he had to say, was
accepted unquestioningly by the NHLPA's experts) is inconsistent with Dr. Kutcher's suggestion that he
lacked "situational awareness."

You don't really need to read between the lines here. While Bettman has vested interests when it comes to the concussion issue, it's clear they weren't buying what Wideman sold to the doctors.