While the NHL’s top power brokers "typically present a unified public front," the emails that have surfaced this week as part of the NHL concussion lawsuit "indicated that multiple owners were not on the same page" as Commissioner Gary Bettman with regards to head injuries, according to James Mirtle of the GLOBE & MAIL. Predators co-Owner Tom Cigarran "had the stiffest rebuke for Bettman" back in October '11. After Predators C Mike Fisher was "dropped by a violent hit to the head in an early season game," Cigarran emailed Predators GM David Poile "to check on Fisher’s condition." When told Fisher had a concussion and that Ducks D François Beauchemin, who hit Fisher, "wasn’t going to be suspended, Cigarran sent a pointed note to Bettman." Cigarran "alluded to a potential lawsuit like the one the NHL is now facing from former players, who allege the league didn’t do enough to protect them from concussions" (GLOBE & MAIL, 3/31). Meanwhile, TSN.ca's Rick Westhead reported NHL Alumni Association President Mark Napier "provided a league executive with a document summarizing a meeting held by former players engaged in the concussion lawsuit against the league." Napier in '14 sent NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly an email "with an attached letter" from former NHLer Brad Maxwell, who is "among the more than 100 former players who are suing the NHL." Maxwell’s letter "described a meeting two months earlier in St. Paul, Minn., where lawyers and former players discussed the ongoing concussion lawsuit against the league." Napier in his email to Daly wrote, "Fyi. Don’t think they are getting much traction. Will keep monitoring" (TSN.ca, 3/30).
BEYOND THE HORIZON: In Toronto, Bruce Arthur writes it is easy to see how hockey "got to this point: how fighting lingers, how head-shots lasted, how the league could find itself in a lawsuit in which another old hockey man" -- Napier -- "quietly forwards an internal update on the lawsuit to NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly, to keep the other side informed." Observers can see who Bettman has "relied on to guide this game, and you can see how often his own vision has been limited to theirs, all these years." The history of hockey is "violent and long, and sometimes it can’t see anything beyond its own horizon" (TORONTO STAR, 3/31).
