No. 114: ALYN McCAULEY / For whom the bell gets rung. The sickening feeling I get when I see an athlete suffer a concussion.

The media used to sell the notion that "you gotta play hurt." The media has often been wrong, but never so wrong. And yeah, I was guilty of it. There are cases when you simply cannot play hurt.

IF you’re talking about the NHL, well, if you talk long enough then at some point the discussion will turn to concussions. Hockey’s a contact game with a high degree of speed built in. Players can’t always see what’s coming. Players are at risk even when the other team plays by the rules, more so if the other team doesn’t and exponentially more so if the other team is gratuitous about it. Simple fact, players are just going to get hurt, injured in just about every way possible. Trite but true.

You’d hope you’d be able to get away from concussions when the games come down to a precious few, but no such luck. This spring, the Panthers’ Sam Bennett knocked Toronto rookie Matthew Knies out of the second-round series with something more than a borderline dirty hit (i.e., the slamming of Knies’s helmeted head against the ice was de trop). Bennett again popped up with another crushing hit in the ECF on Carolina’s Jacob Slavin which had the Hurricanes’ defenseman staggering off the ice.

Then in Game 3 the Final, Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk wound up being evaluated in concussion protocol after a clean shoulder-to-shoulder hit by Vegas’ Keegan Kolesar, but returned to the game almost instantly, as if he did a 360 in a revolving door. He wound up scoring a late goal to send the game into overtime and in Panthers won in overtime—as you’d expect, Tkachuk’s significant hand in victory muted any questions about whether he was fit to be in the game after the hit.

On the megaton scale, it’s not quite up there with Konstantinov on Trent Klatt but Kolesar on Tkachuk is close.

Times do change and, more to the point, how we discuss concussions in sports has changed. In old-time hockey, the media narrative would be something to the effect of: What a gutsy, resilient, brave, heroic turn by that kid, playing after he gets his bell rung! Nowadays, with the stories of challenges faced by former players donating their brains upon their deaths for studies into CTE, it’s something like: you’re telling me he didn’t get concussed?

Advanced on its tire-pumping website and those of corporate media partners, the league’s party line about concussions and brain injuries is, uh, next question. When the subject can’t be changed, Commissioner’s Gary Bettman’s CTE denialism is lawyerly, predictable but nonetheless grating and the media fairly criticize him for it. Looking at this from 30,000 feet and in the rear-view mirror, though, those in the media should acknowledge that they played a part in the the former, out-dated attitudes about concussions.

In today’s SubStack, I acknowledge my previous mistakes on this count, which I deeply regret.

I should have been better than I was simply because of first-hand experience.

I had one fairly massive concussion in my early 20s—a flying baseball bar shattered my orbital bone, crushed my sinuses, loosened my teeth and had me choking on blood as I lay unconscious. Thankfully, no video on that. How long was I out cold I don’t know, but hours later I had to be told that, no, I wasn’t standing up and that, no, that wasn’t my girlfriend I just vomited blood on but her mother, Yeah, it was a horror show that I mostly slept through in a three-week hospital stay, but I had trouble with my vision and balance for months after and four decades later my realigned jaw still cracks loud enough to draw looks every time I yawn.

For sure I had another previously when a session in a boxing gym (Queen City for those tracking such things) caused my scalp to flake off what looked like re dandruff—though I had no open wound, the next day there was blood coming out of the roots of my hair and my ear holes.

Do I ever think of the effects of those concussions? Yup, every time I see athletes struggle to get to their feet, every time I see a boxer get flushed and hit the deck and every time I forget where I put my car keys, which is about daily.

---

WHENEVER I think of concussions in hockey, the first name that comes to mind is Alyn McCauley.

I had forgotten that Alyn had worn an A with the Leafs for a stretch. As the Hockey News interview linked here reveals, that’s his favourite player as a kid parked behind him along the boards.

Last week the Philadelphia Flyers announced the appointment of Alyn as their assistant GM. He was tapped for the job by Danny Briere, the general manager of the club. This small bit of news was an unnecessary reminder of just how long I’ve been around: I first talked to Alyn and Danny when they were players in the Canadian world-junior program. Yup, once they were teens and now they manage historic franchises.

(Sidebar: With a team outside the Original Six but among the 1967 arrivistes, we can use the term “historic” rather than “semi-historic,” can’t we? I mean, we’re getting close to the 50th anniversary of the Flyers’ glory years. at’s the longest stretch that the five extant franchises added in the original round of expansion have gone without a Stanley Cup. Pity the Seals/Barons.)

Alyn was a two-way centre on the team that would wrest the gold at the 1996 WJC in Boston. Danny joined Alyn in the Canadian team’s line-up the following winter; that outfit made it five in a row with a victory over the U.S. in the 1997 final in Geneva. While Danny became the better known player with more than 300 goals in more than 900 NHL games, Alyn was probably the better junior and not simply because he won the CHL POY in ‘97. I saw a lot of Alyn with the Ottawa 67’s because he was the key piece that came over to the Leafs in the trade that sent Doug Gilmour to the Devils. No pressure, kid.

Alyn had his moments with the Leafs—at 24, he was the Leafs’ second-leading scorer in a run to the Eastern Conference Final in the spring of 2002, with 15 points in 20 games, after Mats Sundin went down with injuries early in the second round. That, though, was about as good as it got.

I don’t know that Alyn was ever going to be an NHL All-Star even if things did break right for him … and things didn’t break right for him. (His frustrations come across in this story by friend of the H2SiS(wRT) SubStack David Shoalts in the Globe and Mail in 2000 and in this brief interview with the Hockey News a few years back.) He had a spate of injuries, including concussions in both the junior and NHL ranks that I had the awful experience of witnessing in person. Alyn was a finalist for the Selke Trophy in 2003-2004 (finishing behind the winner Kris Draper and runner-up John Madden). He’d only play one more full season after that. After signing with Los Angeles in the summer of ‘06, he play only 12 more games before having to walk away.

To be clear, it was the sum of injuries and not just concussions that pushed Alyn into early retirement. That said, the spectre of another concussion and the effects that might have were in the mix.

A lot of folks were guilty of averting their eyes reflexively when it the causes and effects of concussions. Others, including the league, teams and some team physicians, should have known better and didn’t do the right thing. And ditto the media.

I’m not going to point to other people in the media—I leave it to them to say they messed up. (No, I won’t hold my breath and neither should you.) Forever, though, the prevailing narrative was the toughest athletes wouldn’t let anything stop them, the ethos of you gotta play hurt. Yeah, we actually valourized an instinct to do needless self-harm.

So advancing this theme, find below a column I wrote for Sportsnet’s website back in December 2009. It’s been scrubbed from the website for years, but I dug up this draft in my files and hopefully there are no typos. I linked the events in the news (Reggie Fleming, Dr Charles Tator vs Don Cherry) to stories in The New York Times and the Globe and Mail respectively. I didn’t talk to Alyn for the story—reached out to him but didn’t hear back. After the fact, though, we connected and he said that he had been upset when he first gave it a read but upon a second and third time through thought it was fair and might be helpful to someone who happened to read it.

---

From sportsnet.ca

AFTER a week that featured evidence that oldetime NHL tough guy Reggie Fleming had suffered severe hockey-related brain damage that led to his death, after a week that featured a multi-platform urinating match between a renowned neurologist and the flogger of Rock'em Sock'em hockey videos, there doesn't seem to be much left to be said about concussions and other head injuries in the game.

I'll try nonetheless.

You're not supposed to play favorites in this business and, in all honesty, I can say that I don't have favorite teams. I do, however, have favorite players, those whose skills and character stand out and make my job an occasional pleasure. One of my favorite junior players over the years was Alyn McCauley. If you don't follow the junior game as much as the NHL you might think I'm plucking a player out of the margins. Not the case, at all. For a stretch in the 90s he was the best junior in Canada, winner of the CHL's player-of-the-year award. He played on a couple of teams that won the world juniors and, on the second trip, he was indisputably the best player on the Canadian side despite a pretty bad case of bronchitis. I tried to hunt down a surgical mask when interviewing him after those tournament games.

From this you can glean that he had game and was a gamer.

The most chilling thing I've seen in hockey had McCauley as its centrepiece.

If you followed the Leafs in the late 90s and early 00s you might remember the night that New Jersey's Sheldon Souray ran McCauley into the end boards at the ACC. I was there that night. In fact, I remember talking to McCauley the morning it happened. And I remember thinking that night that I had seen the last game he would ever play.

And that isn't the most chilling thing I've seen in hockey.

I was there the night that he was knocked out by a puck in the side of the head in Oshawa. I felt pretty sick seeing it--although probably not as sick as the Leafs brass. Cliff Fletcher and others were in attendance when McCauley and the Ottawa 67's came down to take on the Generals. Toronto had just acquired McCauley as a piece of the trade that sent Doug Gilmour to New Jersey.

And that isn't the most chilling thing I've seen in hockey either.

No, the most chilling thing I've seen in hockey didn't happen on the ice. It played out in the dressing room after a game in March 1997.

Ostensibly, I was in Belleville to check in on the progress of McCauley after the concussion he suffered in Oshawa. The 67's were in a playoff tilt with the Bulls and McCauley gave it something more than the old college try. He was the best player on the ice for Ottawa. He was on the ice almost every other shift. He was on the ice for penalty kills and powerplays. He was on the ice with a large bull's eye painted on his helmet and a sign that said "HIT ME." Okay, no bull's eye and no hit-me sign, but still, every player on the Bulls knew exactly how vulnerable McCauley was. Maybe a few of them would have played it straight but a few would have taken liberties and some pleasure from separating McCauley from his senses. 

There were some red flags that night, even to the uninformed eye of the correspondent.

I wrote: "Before the first intermission, McCauley stood at centre ice, feet straddling the red line, bent over at the waist, while his teammates filed into the dressing room. In front of a crowd of 3,000, he sought a moment alone with his thoughts."

I was wrong to write that. Yeah, it was a poetic flourish more wrought than written on deadline. It wasn't what I thought at the time. I should have written: "McCauley played hurt and shouldn't have played at all." 

Thankfully, McCauley made it through the game without getting his neural pathways re-scrambled. Brian Kilrea, the 67's coach, told me that he "had to back off using [McCauley]  as much as I usually would . . . as much as I'd like to." I punched that into my column uncritically, but I hadn't seen Kilrea back off using McCauley at all and should have noted it.

The most chilling scene came after the game. I went down to the dressing room to talk to McCauley. He sat on a bench with his head hanging, chin on his chest. When he lifted his head, he was glassy-eyed, completely spaced out. You would have taken away his keys and wouldn't have allowed him to drive his car in this condition--in fact, you wouldn't have expected him to be able to find his car in the state he was in. He was impaired, drunk without touching a drop, like a boxer who had taken a ten-count ten minutes before.

I asked McCauley about his health, his fitness to play. He was the team captain. He said the stuff that team captains say. He said: "My legs aren't where I'd like them to be yet. I'm not in game shape, but tonight the concussion didn't bother me. The doctors gave me medical clearance to play Friday night, but I still felt a little dizzy sometimes in that game. Tonight it was just my legs. Playing games back-to-back is a tough way to come back."

It was clearly not just his legs. It was his concussion. It was his decision to play through a concussion. It was the doctor's decision to clear him to play through a concussion. It was the team's decision to send him over the boards that night and the next--the 67's were going to host the Bulls the next night.

I should have wrote that I believed that McCauley shouldn't have played. If I had been as brave as Alyn McCauley was, I would have written that. I didn't. He had his life invested in the game and I was earning a paycheque. He did a hard thing, however ill-advised. I did the easy thing rather than stepping up. I wrote: "McCauley's head will clear and Cliff Fletcher will feel better. And if McCauley is something more than a boy wonder, it might go a long way to ending a run of dark nights at the Gardens."

Spooky. If Sheldon Souray's hit on McCauley had done something worse than knock McCauley out for more than a season, if it had a tragic, life-altering or even life-ending outcome, it would rank among the darkest nights in the history of the franchise.    

There was a great pice in the Queen’s Journal by student writer Andrew Bucholtz last winter. Concussions and a knee injury had knocked McCauley out of hockey prematurely and he was working as an assistant coach at Queen's, just a commute from his hometown of Gananoque. McCauley dodged the media in easing himself into retirement and allowing his head coach to speak to team issues. McCauley spoke to Bucholtz because he wanted to go public his hard-won wisdom on head injuries. 

“I felt okay, but I didn’t have the backing from the doctors I saw that I would have liked,” McCauley said told Bucholtz. “Even when you get over the physical obstacle of confidence, you’ve got your self-confidence. Even though my brain seemed like it had healed and everything seemed fine, I had to go out there and prove to myself that I was okay and capable of playing at that level. For a player like me, for most players, you can’t have any hesitation in your game.”

Though McCauley said to me back in '97 that he had clearance from his doctor, it at least seems that he had something less than absolute clearance. That's just a part of the culture of the game, stuff that goes farther back than Reggie Fleming.

McCauley told Bucholtz that he had been "sick to his stomach" when he found out that one of his Queen's players had played through a game with a concussion but didn't tell the coaches. McCauley said that he felt that the message to players had to be that they were risking paralysis and death when they were stepping back on the ice with brain bruising or bleeding. But that player, who only came forward to the Queen's staff with his concussion symptoms at a later practice, was doing exactly what McCauley did with the 67's.

I felt sick to my stomach the night they took Alyn McCauley off on a stretcher at the ACC. I also felt sick to my stomach, though, when I read that story in the Queen's Journal, when I read McCauley's admission that he should have been playing so soon after his earlier concussions.

I glorified what was recklessness by a teenage player with a concussion. You can forgive the teenager on that one but not the messenger.

I accepted the team's line on McCauley's injury. That line doesn't square with McCauley's recollection. Make your own judgment about the team but the messenger deserves a share of blame once more. I shouldn't have so readily accepted as fact that the team had medical clearance to play McCauley 25 minutes a night when, in fact, for the good of his long-term health, he probably shouldn't have even been practicing.

I don't love hockey as much as Alyn McCauley or Brian Kilrea. I don't love it as much as Reggie Fleming did to keep playing for more than a couple of decades, from NHL shrines to forgotten barns in backwaters. I don't love it as much as guys who sell Rock'em Sock'em videos. That is to say, I love the game conditionally.

When the game lets a young man like Alyn McCauley take awful risks I hate the game. When it actually encourages a young man like Alyn McCauley to take awful risks with permanent, irreversible neurological damage I hate the game even more. I know, as does Alyn McCauley, that his story isn't an exceptional one, that it isn't an unusual occurrence. It’s almost certainly a nightly one. And when those in the press box and those in front of the cameras glorify anything that puts players at risk for brain injury--not anything causing brain injury but anything that elevates the risk--we're committing something just short of a crime. I've played my role in that and only some of my sins have been sins of omission, like in Alyn McCauley's case. 

Embracing and even just tolerating unnecessary violence in the game might drive up circulation, ratings and video sales but it does a disservice to young people at all levels of the game, not just NHLers and juniors. Alyn McCauley didn't always listen to the doctors when he was playing but he told the Queen's Journal that he came away with a new understanding of the concussions by attending at a medical conference and listening to experts in neurology. Those who blindly embrace "old-school" values, those who won't hear out the medical experts out of hubris or commercial interests, aren't just resigning themselves to ignorance. No, they either unwittingly or cynically condone a culture that can leave its brightest lights in total darkness.  

END

---

THANKS for reading. For those with paid subscriptions or comps, find the original story for the Globe and Mail in ‘97, when I heaped praise on McCauley who, in retrospect shouldn’t have been back in the 67’s line-up after a concussion.