Like many businesses, we get stupid busy around Christmas, so I tapped our pinch-hitter Mason Baveux to consider Concussions in Hockey while I dig out from under a pile of work, at work.
I thinks why Davey wants me to write on the whole head shot thing in hockey is Davey don’t give a five pound corn on the cob crap about Canada’s Game. This makes me suspect his citizenship, but since his family’s all Canadian, I think I’ll let’er slide.
So’s Sid the Kid spent most of last season ridin’ the sofa as he took one too many to the skull and was feelin’ cattywampus all over. He comes back for two games then reaches for the yellow handle again and is back on the sofa for “an indeterminate amount of time” while he tries to find out where the horizon is again. Or at least narrow it down to only two or three horizons at any given time.
I did some that research on that concussion thing and here’s what she said up the wikitickitavi.org. You got your mild brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury, mild head injury and minor head trauma, which you can use for any of the others as the term for what ails ya. We’ll just call’er concussion. Or Hockey Head.
Down in the fine print she says what happens is yer brain bounces off the inside of yer skull and doesn’t know boo from woo for a while. It could be a minute or two, or a week or two, depending on how hard a wallop you took. Do that enough times and yer brain starts a forgettin stuff, like what’s a yellow light mean at the corner? Drive’er like you stole’er! is the right answer. Pass the effin’ ketchup Maureen! is the wrong answer. Which is what be affecting Sid the Kid.
Some medical folks have been studyin on this for a while, using sporty types in sports what have serious contact. Football is one, Boxing another and Hockey. Seems the medicos have been cuttin’ open the brains of dead players to look for problems. They do have to wait till they pass, as the cuttin is a bit drastic for the walk-in clinic and tends to leave some marks. Fortunately, the sport types have been quite obligin’ as the older ones are dyin off naturally, and the younger ones get all messed up on the pills and booze, then do themselves in. So’s the medicos got lots of brains to work with and what they’re findin is lots of permanent injuries to the brain what are causin all sorts of wrongs.
Like Muhammad Ali (dammit, I still remember when he was Cassius Clay from Louisville, Kentucky) whose got the shakey jakes from what’s called Pugilistic Parkinson Syndrome. What the science boys and girls figure is that he got the Parkinsons from too many shots to the head in his career. Well, that took about five seconds to get ahold of those facts from the Department of Too Effin Obvious.
Anyone crazy enough to stand within arm’s reach of Joe Frazier or Leon Spinks, two lads who could knock a CP westbound freight train off a track by looking at it hard, is gonna get some kind of side effects from bein on the receiving end of a solid punch. You’d have to have headgear the size of Manitoba to get away with that kind of beatin. Which Cassius Clay never had. Which is why he’s retired and can’t speak, nor move too well no more and is a damn shame.
Now think about the hockey. There’s plenty of roughouse, as that’s part of the game and if you’ve played even a little bit on some rink somewhere, you know there’s a lot of stuff around that can rattle your head. The puck for one. The other guy’s elbow for another. Or you could try just fallin off your skates and doin a quad spin face plant on the ice herself. The ice don’t move much. Nor do the boards, or the posts, or the glass.
We’re not even talkin about some dirty defenceman who thinks he should coldcock you one when you’re settin the box on the power play and are lookin away for the forward at the point. Then all you see is the rafters, some shiny lights and finally remember what the coach said about “Keep yer head up!”
We’re talkin before helmets here. Back when Punch Imlach coached. When Don McKenny was part of the Uke Line on the Bruins with Bronco Horvath, Johnny Bucyk and Vic Stasiuk. Those days when you’d see Gordie and Jean go into the corner and watch your rum and Coke shake along with the whole friggin Forum. Not many of the lads got their frontal lobes all scrambled, as nobody wore a helmet and you were entitled to give as good as you got, but it was clean hits. No attempt to maim the other guy, even if he was from Montreal, or Detroit.
Today, decapitation gets you five. Maybe a game misconduct and that’s about it, assumin’ you didn’t go over to the house and piss on his sofa, or cross-check his missus into the washing machine after buggerin the family dog.
The helmets and visors the players are wearin are important, but the side effect of all that armour (and this is true of the football too) is that the grinders and journeymen players feel they can dish out the hardest possible hits they can to make a name for themselves, even if it means puttin someone in the hospital for a long time. But what goes around comes around and we’re findin out that givni the big hits like you’d see on Rock Em Sock Em Hockey 37, will also cost you.
Speakin of costin you, we do know of a lad whose hockey career was what you call a small fish in a pond. He never made the Big Show, as he took too many shots to the brain in Junior and couldn’t focus enough. His job now? He drives the Zamboni up to the arena for the Central Junior. We call him Slappy, as he’s not quite sure what day it is and has to slap himself upside the head to remember it. Sometimes he gets ‘er near right enough. If you bet him five dollars, he’ll eat a stick of butter on a dare. He lives in a part of a sheltered workshop for those what you would call ‘uncomplicated’, or we call Retard Park and Ride, as you can see most of them waitin for the taxi or the ParaTransport to get to where they’re goin.
He still wears his helmet most days as the doctors have said one more pop to the head and he’s likely not even going to remember how to drive the Zamboni. He’s pushin fifty now and never had a home, or a wife, or kids. All he knows is the hockey and how to drive the Zamboni.
Now, just so’s you don’t think I haven’t thought this around the rink between periods, look at two other sports what don’t have body armour: Rugby and Soccer. About all you get is a cup and some cleats for protection. You don’t see a lot of those careers comin’ to an end because the players can’t tell what month it is? Blown out knees? Sure, that’ll get you.
But because your opponents don’t have all the gear on either, they’ll hit you hard enough to get you off the ball, but not hard enough to end your career. And if you tell me that Rugby and Soccer players aren’t as tough and hard as Hockey and Football players, then I’d suggest you’re speakin out your arse and should go squat on the shitter to think that one through a bit more with some Metamucil to clear your talk hole.
What she comes down to is the armour the young ones wear, be it football or hockey. Makes them feel invincible and think they can dish it out without no consequences. Sid the Kid is their poster child. A great career lost because refs don’t call penalties and the gear they all wear makes’em feel like Superman. They’ll all wind up like Slappy and that’s not what the consultants would call a Career Arc.
Breaks my friggin heart.
RoadDave 
Mason Baveux Explains–The Caucus System
Lord save us, Mason wants to explain why all you hear about is the Iowa Caucuses on the tube.
Thanks lad. I wanted to be writin about these here Iowa caucuseses what are all over Ted’s Network these days, as a lot of us north of the border look at that whole thing and say “What the eff are they all about?” Plus two lads from the residence were wonderin, so I’s looked her up.
Iowa, which is the potato state, decided back in the 70’s that California, New York and Texas get all the press when the Yanks go about electin a new President. Nobody gave a crap about what the Iowanners thought. So’s they come up with a truly messed up way to figure out who didn’t suck as much as the other guys wantin to be the Prez.
They figured, go first, afore anyone else. But, bein Yanks they had to make sure everyone got a voice and a vote otherwise they weren’t bein democratic. There’s 99 counties in Iowa and every one has a convention for the Democrats or the Republicans. Right now, the Repubs are in town. Each precinct in Iowa, and there’s 1, 774 of them, elect delegates to one of the 99 county conventions, who then vote for delegates for district and then state conventions. Then, when the big national convention rolls around, they vote for the state delegates, for either the Demos or the Repubs.
What she boils down to is nine-tenths of the population of Iowa is on the graft as a delegate to somebody’s convention. As there be only 3,062,309 people in all of Iowa, most everybody but the shut-ins gets a spin at the wheel.
Here’s what’s really happenin: The media, like CNN, Fox and all the big networks need somethin to fill in the January news. There’s only so many times you can report about the Israelis and Palys takin’ a piece out of each other’s arse, so they’ve made the Iowa Caucuses a Big News Event. What the networks are sayin is that this if the first steps in the Race for the White House, as if Iowa proves something to the 93 lads what studies the Political Sciences.
The list of candidates is your usual carpetbaggers, lyin’ scum, gravy suckers, short-bus window tasters, glad handers and mixed nuts. Most of them couldn’t spell Des Moines unless it was printed on a card in big letters for the them. Come the day after, they’ll never set foot in Iowa again and will get a case of the political amnesia about what they said. But, for the next few hours, Iowa is the center of the whole Universe. If it wasn’t important, then all those satellite trucks are on the road to nowhere and the per diems for the pundits are just bein pissed in the snow.
What ya got is a self-fulfillin prophesy. Everyone says Iowa’s important, therefore it is important, but if you measure it out, Iowa only has one percent of the people in the whole USA.
If they’re so important and so friggin smart, then why don’t the US just shitcan the rest of the votin and let Iowa pick the winner? Because that would leave the US television networks and newspapers with bugger all to say for February to November.
If they’ve got nothin to say, then they might start investigatin all the Banks what made record profits last year, right after the biggest recession on record. Or they might look too closely at all the big businesses what are sending their jobs to Mexico or China, instead of employin folks local. Or they might start investigatin the collection of loons they got in Washington who get a reach-around every hour from some lobbyist. This afternoon it’s the Banks, then the Yellow Rose Growers, followed by Paint-Drinkers, Bee Keepers for Christ and the American Enterprise Institute for Takin a Dump In Your Hat.
The more I think on it, the better off the Yanks are with their caucusees. It keeps’em distracted and busy.
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