Sid the Kid and the Damage Done

These are just some of the problems when your league is run by a bunch of guys who played hockey without helmets.

With the start of the NHL season just six weeks away (43 days! 1,032 hours! 61,920 minutes!), speculation is flying over the fate of the league's golden boy, Sidney Crosby, due to his prolonged recovery from two concussions last January. Sam Fels, writing for NBC Chicago, explains just what the loss of Crosby would mean for the league if he's still suffering from symptoms come October. “He's the game's best player. He's their biggest draw. He's a story wherever he is,” says Fels. “If you threaten to score 70 goals, [ESPN's] Sportscenter has to take notice. Only Crosby is capable of this right now.” (Well, we'll toss in Steve Stamkos, too.) It's easy for us up here in hockeyland to forget about how important star calibre is for the league's viability in the U.S. Should Crosby miss another extended period of time – in a season when there will be no competition from the NBA due to their labour problems, no less – the game could stand to lose much of the cachet it's steadily built since the lockout, all because of careless concussion protocols.

The Toronto Star's Cathal Kelly issues a provocative missive for Crosby to hang up his skates and retire, questioning “why would Crosby risk an invalid’s life in order to return to a game he has already conquered?” The Kid has accumulated almost every major trophy in the game (except for the Conn Smythe for playoff MVP), scored the most famous goal in recent hockey history at the Vancouver Olympics, and his “material needs are settled for a dozen lifetimes.” If Crosby were an actor or a tech start-up wiz, then yeah, we can see him retiring and blowing his fortune on Hollywood homes and fast cars, but this is a hockey player – the league's best, and one of its most competitive – and he'd have hardly got as far as he has if he figured a Stanley Cup or a scoring title was enough. And therein lies the rub that every professional athlete must face at some point – when does my health outweigh my chance at making history? “Ending a career this glorious so soon would be a kind of tragedy,” admits Kelly. “Hockey may think it needs Sidney Crosby, but it surely doesn’t need him crippled.” Which just makes the matter even more complicated – would it be worse for the game to have Crosby return, only to injure himself irreparably, or just to have him call it quits while he's ahead?

At least there are legions of hockey writers across the continent applying pressure on the league to protect its players further, such as the Ottawa Citizen's Wayne Scanlan, who demands to “see Crosby in full-on drills ... to hear the Kid himself say he’s good to go, that he’s been symptom-free for X number of weeks” before his conscience can let him enjoy the game. The half-truths and obfuscations released by the Pittsburgh Penguins and Crobsy's agent about his health are just the latest symptom of a league that has been too hesitant to alter its rules and too quiet about the threats its players face daily. Sure, hockey players assume a certain amount of risk just by stepping onto the ice. But in a summer where two enforcers' lives ended far too early, and the second coming of Wayne Gretzky has been sidelined on his parent's Nova Scotia couch, the toll is just too high. “Forgive those of us who will keep watch of Sidney Crosby’s return to the game with hands over eyes, peeking between fingertips,” writes Scanlan. We'll be watching his return in much the same way.