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Originally Posted by SuperMatt18
I don't disagree with Carcillo's point about the NHL needing to do a better job of protecting players but IMO the guy is still a P.O.S who doesn't give a care about anybody but himself.
He was a terribly dirty player on the ice, he was a rat, and layed out a ton of dirty hits (Suspended 12 times in 9 NHL seasons).
Now he is playing this holier than thou card since he wants to get money from the NHL out of a lawsuit and acts like he actually has other players best interests at heart.
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Yeah, I don't think this is entirely fair. Who's to say what Carcillo cares about, or how little or how much his post-playing experience has changed him and his perspective? Unless you know the guy this is pretty inflammatory.
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The guy only cares in raising the profile of his case in order to get a better settlement from the NHL for himself, and is only fooling himself if thinks people actually believe that players in his generation didn't know the impacts concussions had long term when he was a player.
He's only 33 years old, and concerns around concussions and post-concussion syndrome have been around in the public knowledge for at least 15 years now. For him to act like he didn't know about the impact from concussions and how it impacted players when he was running around taking cheap shots on his fellow players is B.S.
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But how readily available and public was this information? Dr. Bennett Omalu published his work on chronic traumatic encephalopathy in
Neurosurgery in 2005, and at that time his research was restricted just to head trauma experienced by NFL players. I don't know about you, but I as an educated hockey enthusiast sure do not have my finger on the pulse of current discussions in neurology and brain science. How many NHL players do you believe have made the effort to stay up to date with this sort of scientific research?
I am a fan who follows the League pretty closely, and the dangers of chronic head trauma, fighting and checking in the NHL did not register very strongly in my own orbit until the publication of John Branch's series of NYT articles on the life of Derek Boogard—who died in Summer 2011—and his book
Boy on Ice published in 2014. By my recollection this was the first time brain trauma and hockey had entered conversations in popular media.
So, no. I tend to think that the dangers of CTE were not common knowledge—certainly not among the fraternity of NHL players—as early as 2003. The NFL did not even acknowledge the link between football and CTE until 2009, which was long before this discussion had even begun in NHL circles.