One time during his 14-year National Hockey League career, Reed Larson got knocked out after a check from behind sent him headfirst into the boards.
Another time, he took a slapshot to the face during a morning practice, requiring 50 stitches and plastic surgery. He still played in that evening's game.
Larson believes he suffered numerous concussions _ he's not sure how many. Players didn't necessarily count head knockings when he played. So when the 60-year-old Minnesotan hears tales of retired hockey players suffering from neurological woes, he worries.
"Whenever I'm irritable or forgetful, is it because I'm just getting old, or is it because of the abuses to my head over my career?" asked Larson, one of 126 former players who have sued the NHL for allegedly failing to protect players from the long-term effects of brain trauma.
More than a dozen of those plaintiffs have Minnesota connections, including several former North Stars such as Larson. The litigation is snaking its way through the federal courts in St. Paul, Minn., and the battle is heating up. The NHL is intensifying its challenge to brain-injury scientists, and a ruling on class status for all retired players is expected soon.
The National Football League faced similar litigation, settling with players for $1 billion in 2015. The NFL later publicly acknowledged a link between the sport and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease at the heart of the head injury debate.
The NHL maintains that scientific research has yet to establish a causal link between sports concussions and CTE. "At bottom, the science just has not advanced to the point where causation determinations can be responsibly made," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a letter to a U.S. senator included in court filings.
To make its case, the league is seeking a trove of pre-publication research data from Boston University's CTE Center. Experts there have said the disease is a long-term consequence of repetitive brain trauma. The CTE Center is fighting the NHL's request, calling it an invasive demand that threatens to have a chilling effect that could undermine research.
Meanwhile, more emails between NHL executives were unsealed recently in the court case, against the league's wishes.
"Well, ultimately you never can get rid of fighting ... no matter what the injury risk," wrote one NHL officiating executive to another in 2009, capping her observation with a winking emoji.
Replied the other: "Ya love it, much to the dismay of the tree huggin', never played sport, leftist doctors ... that soon won't let us climb stairs for fear of concussion."
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