Tanabe situation gets murkier

On Friday, Chip Alexander reported that David Tanabe is still suffering from concussion-like or post-concussion symptoms. It has now been seven months since his mysterious injury and two since the Canes attempted to buy out the remaining year on his contract.

I have openly questioned the validity of his situation, and I have been unimpressed with the "details" that have emerged. This doesn't accord with my outspoken support for taking concussions very seriously, but I'm just not making heads or tails of this situation.

The occurrence of the injury itself can't be pinpointed, but we know that he was taken out of the December 18 game against the Leafs and never returned during the 2007-08 season. Had he been injured previously and some mild collision put him over the edge? Perhaps. That's the consensus. His refusal to go to team meetings and exit interviews has been well documented. His decision to clean out his own locker has been well documented. What has not been documented has been his medical status. The only details we have been afforded have been shady at best. Usually, injury status updates are more frequent and more detailed, but we went months without hearing a single word. Even now, we get some very unspecific news that Tanabe is "unfit to play".

Unfortunately, we haven't been given any details. When someone has an issue with their foot, we usually get lots of details, such as with Ryan Whitney:

Pittsburgh Penguins defenceman Ryan Whitney will be out three to five months following surgery to correct a chronic problem with his left foot... Dr. Robert Anderson operated Friday in Charlotte, N.C. The newspaper described the surgery as an osteotomy, defined as a procedure to shorten, lengthen or realign a bone or bones.

(via Canadian Press)
When Matt Cullen was out with a concussion, we were given nearly daily updates with specific details about what kinds of specialists he was seeing and what his specific problems were. Take this one for example, from the N&O on Feb 2:

In addition to Mike Peters, the team's eye doctor, Cullen is also working with concussion expert Kevin Guskiewicz at the University of North Carolina and Cary neuro-optometrist Susan Durham.

So why now do we get the vaguest of details? All we know is that Tanabe went to an anonymous doctor at an anonymous clinic in Buffalo who gave the very broad prognosis: "not a clean bill of health".

Anyway, Jim Rutherford has announced that he expects for Tanabe to report to camp and be monitored by official team doctors. This might help shed some light on things. I know concussions are hard things to work with because of the complexity of symptoms and the fact that they aren't as easy to diagnose and monitor as, say, a broken bone. Still, it's very frustrating to not know anything about the status.

The Mule sits out

Johan Franzen, leading goal scorer in these Stanley Cup playoffs, was forced to sit out of Saturday's 2-1 win in game 2 between the Red Wings and the Stars. He will also miss game three Monday in Dallas. Apparently, is suffering from "concussion-like symptoms" which have been persisting since the Colorado series. He will remain in Detroit where he will undergo baseline testing among other medical examinations.

The Wings have had a fairly balanced attack and some marvelous goaltending, but this is a huge loss. If the baseline tests are not favorable, Franzen will be forced to miss at least a week or more.

Unfortunately, there is a tendency for the team doctors and the players themselves to look the other way concerning concussions. I've written about this before with specific points about how concussions need not be taken so lightly because of the long term and devastating consequences they might bring about. The Toronto Star ran a two part piece about concussions that everyone should read. Even if you've already read it, you should revisit.
Part one
Part two

Even though this is a crucial time for a team to be without one of its best players, they really need to take his health quite seriously. Just ask Kevin Kaminski.

In addition to leading the playoffs in goals (12), Franzen is the author of the prizewinning novel The Corrections. Okay. He's not, but I never get tired of that joke.

canes, river rats on tv tonight

Tonight the Hurricanes will play the Rangers in the fifth game of a six-game homestand.

While the Hurricanes attempt to extend their hot streak, their top minor league affiliate Albany River Rats will be playing a game against the Rochester Amerks. That game will be part of the NHL Network's AHL coverage.

I won't be able to watch either game, but I'll have the dvr working overtime.

As expected, Tim Gleason will not play tonight. The good news is that defenseman Dennis Seidenberg (ankle) has a good chance of playing.

The other good news is that Tuomo Ruutu (henceforth referred to as "Rudy" or "Rooty" or "Ruuty") will be back in the lineup. Our friend The Sliding Pokecheck has a great post about the amount of character this guy is already displaying. There's also a great picture of him at a press conference yesterday. Looking like Frankenstein's monster, but with a huge grin on his face like he couldn't be happier.

He'll play with a cage mask tonight. At least he'll attempt to play.

Eventually, I'll have a NHR post about the completely ridiculous display of asshattery last night in a college basketball game. In brief: In the Duke/Georgia Tech game, a GaTech player took a charge and hit his head against the floor very hard. He was clearly, clearly concussed. Instead of being taken to the room, he sat on the bench with his eyes rolling around in his head. He sat there for a while, then was SENT BACK INTO THE GAME by their idiot coach. On the floor, he looked worse than he did on the bench. His eyes were rolling and fluttering. He was shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, trying to remove the cobwebs and regain his focus. It was a completely asinine move by the coach, putting the boy's health in very serious jeopardy. His mother was in the stands, and I hope she went to kick the coach's ass after the game.

Anyway, both the Canes game and the River Rats game begin at 7:00. The Rats are on a bit of a streak of their own, and it should be a treat to watch.

As far as the Canes game is concerned, it will be another Staal/Staal matchup and a chance for Canes fans to lustily boo Sean Avery.

Concussions in the NHL

Randy Starkman of the The Toronto Star has written a terrific two-part piece on concussions in the NHL. It was brought to my attention via James Mirtle's blog, and I highly recommend that everybody read it.

Part One -- Critical Condition: The human toll of hockey concussions
Part Two -- Players Put Team Over Health

Concussions can lead to longer-term health problems, must notably a proclivity for Alzheimer's disease.

"A University of North Carolina study reported in 2005 that retired NFL players faced a 37 per cent higher risk of Alzheimer's than similarly aged U.S. males. It also found repeated concussions significantly raised the chance they'd suffer dementias such as mild cognitive impairment later in life."
"A neuropathologist who examined former NFL safety Andre Waters' brain after his suicide a year ago said the 44-year-old's brain tissue was that of an 85-year-old man and showed signs of early stage Alzheimer's. Asked once how many concussions he'd had, Waters replied: "I think I lost count at 15."

This is some startling stuff.

One of the symptoms of Alzheimer's and other such dementias is outbursts of violence, even if the patient has no history of violence in their healthy years. Part one of that series by the Star details a horrifying turn of events in the life of former Capitals enforcer Kevin "Killer" Kaminski. The article is a MUST READ.
Kaminski was sidelined with a concussion and...

Megan Kaminski had stopped asking her husband to help with the kids. He'd always been a great partner and incredibly devoted to his little girls, but now he couldn't stand to be around them.

"He'd be mad, he would swear," she said. "It was like living with a complete stranger. He was totally a different person. I couldn't talk to him or rationalize with him. The girls didn't understand anything that was going on with him. It was, `Where's Daddy?'"

But one night she had a deadline to meet for some writing and asked Kevin to get the girls out of the bath and into their pyjamas. She soon found Lexi crying at her office door.

"She said, `Daddy's really mad and he's scaring me.' I was bending down in front of her and the bedroom door opened from our master bedroom and he came flying down the hallway and he picked her up by one hand and he cocked his fist back."
Somehow Megan got her daughter out of harm's way and push the feared enforcer into the walk-in closet in their bedroom.

"We just had this huge screaming match in the closet and then finally he just started crying," she said. "He said, `I can't live like this anymore. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't who I am.'

"We just sat in that closet and cried. We could hear our daughters standing outside the closet – they were 2 and 4 at the time. They were standing out there, hugging each other, bawling."

Megan called the team's sports psychologist and he came to the Kaminski home immediately. He spent a long time talking with the Kaminskis, explaining to Kevin that he had to stop trying to come back. He told him that if we wanted to know his kids when he got older, he had to stop playing hockey now."

If you look outside hockey, you don't have to look far to see some really horrible things that have happened to former athletes because of concussions.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (aka "Boxer's dementia" aka "punch-drunk syndrome") is a form of dementia, specific to people who have suffered multiple blows to the head.

On June 25, 2007, professional wrestler Chris Benoit killed his family, then himself in what was initially deemed a bout of "roid rage". Later, it was ruled to be a result of severe brain damage due to concussions. ABC News reported that

"The tests, conducted by Julian Bailes of the Sports Legacy Institute, show that Benoit's brain was so severely damaged it resembled the brain of an 85-year-old Alzheimer's patient.

Bailes and his research team say that this damage was the result of a lifetime of chronic concussions and head trauma suffered while Benoit was in the wrestling ring."

Andre Waters, formerly a standout safety for the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles, committed suicide on November 20, 2006. He was posthumously diagnosed with CTE. The neurologists found the exact same thing that was found in Benoit's case.

The neuropathologist, Dr. Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading expert in forensic pathology, determined that Mr. Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s victims. Dr. Omalu said he believed that the damage was either caused or drastically expedited by successive concussions Mr. Waters, 44, had sustained playing football.

On September 30, 2004, former Pittsburgh Steelers limeman Justin Strzelczyk led New York State troopers on a high speed chase on the interstate highway. He flung beer bottles and wads of cash from his window of his pickup truck as he erratically sped down the wrong way of the interstate, putting hundreds of people in danger's way. (I was actually on that highway in that area that day). Ultimately, a truck driver sacrificed his rig, making a huge "stop stick" out of it. Strzelczyk hit the truck and died instantly. He had been suffering from depression, and as posthumous tests proved, CTE.

Strzelczyk (pronounced STRELL-zick) is the fourth former National Football League player to have been found post-mortem to have had a condition similar to that generally found only in boxers with dementia or people in their 80s....“This is irreversible brain damage,” Omalu said. “It’s most likely caused by concussions sustained on the football field.”

Dr. Ronald Hamilton of the University of Pittsburgh and Dr. Kenneth Fallon of West Virginia University confirmed Omalu’s findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition evidenced by neurofibrillary tangles in the brain’s cortex, which can cause memory loss, depression and eventually Alzheimer’s disease-like dementia. “This is extremely abnormal in a 36-year-old,” Hamilton said. “If I didn’t know anything about this case and I looked at the slides, I would have asked, ‘Was this patient a boxer?’ ”

In short, repeated concussions have turned the brains of these men in their thirties or forties into mush. Instead of having healthy brains, their brains resemble the brains of men twice their age with dementia.
Because of concussions.

Despite the evidence that concussions lead to far worse things down the road, both the NFL and the NHL downplay the medical findings and the reporting of concussions. Colin Campbell has said

"Some are legitimate. I think some you might find aren't legitimate. ... I think there's a small percentage, not a great percentage, of players who use it as an excuse, `Oh yeah, I've got a concussion.' They can milk it. It's a hard thing to really say that you haven't, you know, if you're trying to get some extra insurance money out of it to get paid an extra year or something.... "

And more alarmingly, you have players who knowingly put themselves back out on the ice when they shouldn't. As part two of that story accentuates, players and coaches will often weigh the importance of the game versus the health of the player. In a preseason or early season game, a player will leave with a head injury, but late in the season, or in the playoffs, they'll look the other way.

In game five of the 2006 Stanley Cup playoffs, Hurricanes defenseman Aaron Ward was hit in the head "so hard that he didn't know who he was". He left the ice to vomit several times, then came back despite not knowing who he was or where he was. He knew that if he left the game and reported a head injury, he would have to take a baseline test and that he would fail, be diagnosed with a concussion and miss the rest of the series. Carolina missed their chance to win it that night, and needed games six and seven to make it happen. This is an example of the player thinking that the game and the team was far too important for him to sit out. In my opinion, this is lunacy.

CrAdams banned for two games; Larose and Tanabe concussed; Albany has the flu

The Carolina Hurricanes have been called a lot of things by a lot of people. "Dirty" has never been one of them. Prior to this season, the last time a Hurricanes player was handed an NHL suspension was in the 2002 playoffs. Suddenly, in the last four games, two Hurricanes have been suspended.

Scott Walker was given a one game suspension for headbutting the Senators' Mike Fisher.

Against the Leafs last night, Craig Adams was penalized for high-sticking Alex Steen late in the third period before the Leafs' monumental collapse. As I watched the game, I wondered why the call was "high sticking" rather than "cross checking". It was a high hit, and it was to the head. The league is doing its part to make sure hits to the head are kept to a minimum. Today, the league handed Craiggers a two game suspension.
However, Luke Decock wants to know (and so do I) why that player was singled out. In the first period of that game, Nik Antropov clipped Erik Cole in the face, opening a cut. No penalty. Occasionally, the refs miss stuff, but even the Leafs announcers wondered where the call was.

In the third, Alex Ponikarovsky (who would later become the goat) checked Chad "Sharpie" LaRose from behind into the end wall, giving him a concussion. No penalty there either, but the ref was right on top of it and let it go.

At some point in the first period, "Avi" Tanabe suffered a concussion, but nobody knows how or when. I assume he concussed himself when he considered actually hitting someone.

Both Tanabe and LaRose failed baseline tests and did not travel with the team. This is not good news. The Albany River Rats have the flu. Got that? The whole team. Has the flu. They won't be of any help. Just yesterday, they themselves called up seven players from the ECHL Elmira (NY) Jackals. The Jackals are somehow affiliated with the Columbus Blue Jackets, but ECHL affiliations are loose at best.
The River Rats can ill afford to be without any of their players -- they already have THIRTEEN players out with flu or injury -- but Carolina will be missing two forwards and possibly will continue to miss Rod Brind'Amour with the flu. No moves yet, but I'm itching to get a look at RW Jerome Samson who has 18 (11/7) points in Albany or LW Brandon Nolan (son of Ted), who has 21 (10/11). Neither have made their NHL debut, but both are playing better than Keith Aucoin and Dave Gove.

The suspension isn't that much of a surprise, but the news of two concussions was unwelcome. Carolina does not have enough healthy extras to fill those voids. Someone is gonna get a call from somewhere.