Carcillo "spamming" twitter with concussion related tweets/links

[eco's bones]

I get his side. if he doesn't play he doesn't get paid. it's tough for those borderline nhl lower tier guys. same with the NFL. having had a bad concussion and being off work for months I can't imagine him playing with it. poor guy

FWIW if you look at some of the plaintiffs for the Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd lawsuit there are some really good hockey players in there. For instance--1980 USA Olympic gold medal winners Dave Christian and Rob McClanahan, Dennis Maruk, Don Murdoch, Keith Brown, Michal Pivonka, Bernie Nicholls, Blaine Stoughton, Curt Bennett, Grant Ledyard, Kevin Stevens, Richard Brodeur, Steve Payne, Reed Larson, Gary Leeman, Brian Savage, Joe Murphy, Eddie Westfall. From that same lawsuit I know at least 3 of the plaintiffs have died--Jeff Parker, Steve Montador and Richie Dunn.

Three hall of famers whose careers ended because of concussions--Scott Stevens, Eric Lindros, Paul Kariya. I'm thinking of Marc Savard, Jeff Beukeboom and Mike Richter too. The lists you could make up could go on and on and on and on.

I'll add this--I don't think the lawsuit is necessarily about cutting large checks to former players--it's more about getting them medical help that at least some of these players can't really afford. A number of them because of their health issues are unemployable. If you can't stand being in the light, if you have constant headaches, grand mal seizures, all kinds of personality hiccups or erratic kinds of behavior owing to brain disfunction you're going to have a problem holding down a job--have problems keeping family life together. Look at Matt Johnson wandering around homeless in Los Angeles. Dale Purinton breaking into houses. Just for two examples. There have been several suicides as well.

It's a problem and the multi-billion $ NHL trying to walk away from any responsibility is a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.

 

[pvr]

...Carcillo "spamming" twitter with concussion related tweets/links..

Concussions in sports is certainly a huge concern, deserving of extensive research in both treatment and prevention.

That said, I find just about everything associated with Twitter to be spam.

 

[joe dirte]

People change. I don't see any conflict if someone used to be a certain way but is now living or espousing contradictory views/opinions. In fact I'd say it's pretty common.

It's like someone that used to be involved in criminal gangs becoming a person that tries to keep young people out of criminal gangs.

Yes that's perfectly fine. But don't criticize the NHL until you've acknowledged how big a part of the problem you we're, and show some remorse.

Carrillo was a menace. From a very young age he did some disgusting things. Like knocking most of the teeth out of a 16 year old kids head in the OHL. Upon returning from a lengthy suspension for that he promptly got suspended again for going after a ref.

Anything he's doing now is meaningless until he acknowledges the crap he did, and how revolting he was as a player and person. Until that point it's just dusgusting hypocrisy.

 

[VVP]

I just finished listening to Ken Dryden's "Game Change". It is one of the best hockey books ever. I don't think I will ever see the game of hockey the same again. All of you blaming Carcillo may want to read this book.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

FWIW if you look at some of the plaintiffs for the Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd lawsuit there are some really good hockey players in there. For instance--1980 USA Olympic gold medal winners Dave Christian and Rob McClanahan, Dennis Maruk, Don Murdoch, Keith Brown, Michal Pivonka, Bernie Nicholls, Blaine Stoughton, Curt Bennett, Grant Ledyard, Kevin Stevens, Richard Brodeur, Steve Payne, Reed Larson, Gary Leeman, Brian Savage, Joe Murphy, Eddie Westfall. From that same lawsuit I know at least 3 of the plaintiffs have died--Jeff Parker, Steve Montador and Richie Dunn.

Three hall of famers whose careers ended because of concussions--Scott Stevens, Eric Lindros, Paul Kariya. I'm thinking of Marc Savard, Jeff Beukeboom and Mike Richter too. The lists you could make up could go on and on and on and on.

I'll add this--I don't think the lawsuit is necessarily about cutting large checks to former players--it's more about getting them medical help that at least some of these players can't really afford. A number of them because of their health issues are unemployable. If you can't stand being in the light, if you have constant headaches, grand mal seizures, all kinds of personality hiccups or erratic kinds of behavior owing to brain disfunction you're going to have a problem holding down a job--have problems keeping family life together. Look at Matt Johnson wandering around homeless in Los Angeles. Dale Purinton breaking into houses. Just for two examples. There have been several suicides as well.

It's a problem and the multi-billion $ NHL trying to walk away from any responsibility is a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.

While I agree and hope they can get financial help to those players so there aren't anymore lives lost prematurely You just gotta look at the list and see some "humour" in it.

Stevens basically ended Lindros' career and sped up Kariya's.

You list Beukeboom who was suckered by a player you list later in Matt Johnson.

The NHL has tried to cheap their way out of this, but the players themselves have a huge part in this, too.

They took cheap shots. They keep wearing the "new" and "improved" shoulder pads that could be mistaken as swat attire.

Why don't these players attack the NHLPA ?

 

[LeapOnOver]

I don't blame Carcillo, but when someone suffers through their life with spats of addiction and die at 35, it's just being respectful by saying it was concussion related. He had already taken a toll on his body in many other ways and to say it was the concussions is a bit disingenuous.

Also, I don't really get why we focus on concussions. I mean, Mike Bossy retired because of his back, other guys retire because of knees ankles. It's all in the same realm of the human body. It all negatively impacts their life going forward. Why is their such a focus on concussions. I don't really think they are "avoidable" without changing the game. There are protocols for every injury, concussion is just one of many.

 

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Was in the CMB radio show here in New York and said this.

Now that is taking it a bit extreme....

 

[eco's bones]

While I agree and hope they can get financial help to those players so there aren't anymore lives lost prematurely You just gotta look at the list and see some "humour" in it.

Stevens basically ended Lindros' career and sped up Kariya's.

You list Beukeboom who was suckered by a player you list later in Matt Johnson.

The NHL has tried to cheap their way out of this, but the players themselves have a huge part in this, too.

They took cheap shots. They keep wearing the "new" and "improved" shoulder pads that could be mistaken as swat attire.

Why don't these players attack the NHLPA ?

Yeah it is like that. But there was a lot more ignorance about cause and effect too and at the same time the NHL use to play up and market potential bloodbaths---so yeah they should bear some responsibility. Players were bigger--4th lines had goons. Your ticket to the NHL didn't have to depend on actual hockey skill. That was the way it was. The seeds of that go right back to the Broad St. Bullies when the Flyers proved you could win a Stanley Cup with violence and intimidation. This continued on for at least close to 40 years. There were fights in most games---as well as the NHL was fine with players like Scott Stevens targeting heads or Eric Lindros running people from behind into the boards.

The NHL knows now though and we know they know now not because of the lawsuits but because of the spotters in the stands. That is an unspoken acknowledgement that there is a problem and they are doing that to try to keep things from going bad to worse. The effects to some of these players has been devastating. Some can't work and they can't keep up with their medical treatment. Families falling apart because they're impossible to live with. The back stories of players like Reg Fleming and Larry Zeidel who preceded the era of the Broad Street Bullies is instructive too. Brain injuries are no joke.

As for the NHLPA--they should be a lot more involved in finding a solution too. They were certainly complicit in how the game was marketed. Not sure whether they're included in the lawsuits. They might be. The real money is with the NHL and the owners though and a lot of them are super wealthy. Together they could easily afford to at least help the players with their medical issues.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

I get his side. if he doesn't play he doesn't get paid. it's tough for those borderline nhl lower tier guys. same with the NFL. having had a bad concussion and being off work for months I can't imagine him playing with it. poor guy

Not really.

He wanted to play in the NHL instead of getting a regular job, so he took the role of enforcer. He was a willing participant in his actions.

You make it sound like he was forced at gunpoint to play hockey for a living. He wasn't.

 

[Chimpradamus]

Isn't spamming the entire concept behind using twitter?

 

[Devilsfan118]

Was in the CMB radio show here in New York and said this.

Zero credibility. Zero.

Again, you don't win favor with comments like these.

 

[paragon]

Is this Carcillo's way of escaping the guilt of intentionally aiming to giving people brain injuries?

 

[tarheelhockey]

Not so much a lack of compassion, as bemusement at seeing “activism” by the guy who regularly orchestrated nonsense like this:



Players like Carcillo are the very reason we now have anti-headshot and anti-fighting rules. A decade ago the game was infested with rats like him, who made a living out of running around trying to cut their peers’ careers short. This is not a guy who played a “gritty” game within the lines of what was acceptable, like Montador. He was a problem child from Day One and frankly we don’t really need his voice in this debate — the people who were actually ahead of the curve in the argument were arguing against HIM all along.

The issue I have with him is that he came into the league in 2007, not 1977. His notorious sucker punch on Matt Bradley was at the end of 2009. His cheap run at Tom Gilbert was in 2012.

People were absolutely 100% talking about head injuries and PCS at that time. For context, the NHL established its first concussion protocol in 1997. The big NFL study that brought this issue to headlines was published in 2005. Between 2008 and 2010 this was the biggest off-field story in sports. GQ’s big expose, the one that was the basis for the movie “Concussion”, was published in 2009. The same month in 2009 that Carcillo jumped Bradley, the NHL confirmed that Reg Fleming had CTE when he died. The NHL established the off-ice concussion protocol in 2011, after the Crosby and Savard concussions. The run of enforcer deaths happened in late 2011. Junior Seau and Jovan Belcher killed themselves in 2012. EVERYBODY was talking about this stuff. Yet Dan Carcillo was out there racking up 200+ PIM during this timeframe. Again, Carcillo’s run at Tom Gilbert was in 2012.

Watching the Player’s Trubune video, it’s rather noticeable that his energy for this topic comes from how it has affected him personally. He had nothing to say about any of this until it was HIS friend dying (in 2015), until it was HIS brain being degraded day by day, until it was HIS family facing a future without him. Up until that time, Dan Carcillo was more than happy to be the one collecting a paycheck to do those things to other people. He was part of the arms race that had guys like him and Cooke and Torres making this stuff an issue in the first place.

It’s not that he’s wrong to stand up about the issue. It’s not that he doesn’t have a good argument. It’s not that I don’t respect him for admitting he was in the wrong. It’s that frankly I don’t want to hear it from him, when everyone else in the world was screaming for this stuff to stop YEARS before he had his road-to-Damascus moment. If he wants to work with the league and the PA to change things for future players, fantastic... but he’s exactly the wrong person to make a big public stink to hold others accountable.

So, having ripped into Carcillo back then, I feel like it's only right to follow up after seeing this.



I don't want to get into Cherry (we've already beaten that horse to death) and definitely not into the identity politics raging around the CTV show. This post isn't about whether the political opinions are right or wrong.

In those posts above, I called him a "rat" and a "problem child", and implied that his repentance is based purely on selfish interests. I think it's really interesting to see him embrace the reality of what he WAS, in the context of recognizing how he came to be that person. I think it's really interesting to see him not just spamming twitter, not just attacking people, but holding himself accountable for his own role in how this story played out. It's interesting to see him, having matured out of being a hot-headed young man, admitting that he was at one point in time a bully and a source of preventable physical and mental harm to other people. And importantly -- that he no longer recognizes that person as himself.

This makes it a lot more complicated for me when I think about who he is, and who he was.

 

[Pilky01]

Its awful convenient that people like Carcillo can't recognize their horrible behavior until after they have made their money off of it.

What Jess Allen said was racist. If Carcillo wants to blame hockey culture on "white boys" instead of taking responsibility for himself, then he is saying racist shit as well. Standard playbook for rich white people, to "acknowledge their privilege" and diffuse responsibility for their own actions by blaming "white people" in general.

I am the exact same age as Carcillo. I grew up watching Don Cherry and Rock'em Sock'em, but I wasn't a vicious, violent little rat so I never made the decision to be a horrible human being for the sake of winning hockey games.

As I said earlier in this thread, there is no zealot like a convert. Carcillo doesn't get credit for not trying to cause permanent injury to people anymore. You don't get credit for shit you're supposed to do.

 

[542365]

Is this Carcillo's way of escaping the guilt of intentionally aiming to giving people brain injuries?

I doubt it. It's Carcillo's way of staying relevant and in the limelight a little longer. Some take up coaching, other analytics, and others still just bitching about the league that made them who they are.

Concussions are a serious issue and deserve to be discussed and considered at length, but Dan Carcillo is the absolute worst person to be spearheading this cause. He was as big of an offender as the league has ever seen. His play alone caused countless concussions and injuries which severely limit the quality of life after hockey. He should not be on his soapbox about this. It's impossible to take seriously when such a rat of a player is the voice behind it.

 

[Pay Carl]

I doubt it. It's Carcillo's way of staying relevant and in the limelight a little longer. Some take up coaching, other analytics, and others still just *****ing about the league that made them who they are.

Concussions are a serious issue and deserve to be discussed and considered at length, but Dan Carcillo is the absolute worst person to be spearheading this cause. He was as big of an offender as the league has ever seen. His play alone caused countless concussions and injuries which severely limit the quality of life after hockey. He should not be on his soapbox about this. It's impossible to take seriously when such a rat of a player is the voice behind it.

Lol someone definitely didn’t read the reason this was bumped

 

[TheLegend]

Daniel Carcillo is exactly the right guy to push the campaign.

Because he’s still alive to do so.

 

[Pilky01]

Daniel Carcillo is exactly the right guy to push the campaign.

Because he’s still alive to do so.

How fortunate for Carcillo that he was never on the receiving end of one of his cheap shots.

I would say "exactly the right guy" would be the kind of person who's career was cut short by people like Carcillo. Someone like Eric Lindros or Paul Kariya.

Or maybe someone like Akim Aliu, who was on the receiving end of trashy white boy behavior as opposed to someone like Carcillo who was administering the trashy white boy behavior.

 

[BigBadBruins7708]

Daniel Carcillo is exactly the right guy to push the campaign.

Because he’s still alive to do so.

And Bill Cosby is the exact right guy to push an anti rape campaign...

The laundry list of victims of Carcillo's head shots are the ones that would be the right faces for this campaign, not Carcillo himself

 

[TheLegend]

How fortunate for Carcillo that he was never on the receiving end of one of his cheap shots.

I would say "exactly the right guy" would be the kind of person who's career was cut short by people like Carcillo. Someone like Eric Lindros or Paul Kariya.

Or maybe someone like Akim Aliu, who was on the receiving end of trashy white boy behavior as opposed to someone like Carcillo who was administering the trashy white boy behavior.

Maybe you need to dump all the stereotypical crap you’re using as an excuse to shoot the messenger instead of recognizing that it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

He’s currently suffering from the same condition that you’re opining that he’s done to other players. He has already acknowledged all of that, and has to spend the rest of whatever life he has left living with it.

So instead of being a good little boy and lock himself up in a closet like every keyboard warrior out there wants him to do he’s out trying to draw awareness to the problem as a living example.

 

[TheLegend]

And Bill Cosby is the exact right guy to push an anti rape campaign...

The laundry list of victims of Carcillo's head shots are the ones that would be the right faces for this campaign, not Carcillo himself

Funny you should mention Bill Cosby...

In the early 70’s a couple of college friends and I got to sit down with Cosby for about an hour and just talk about anything and everything. He was waiting to go out to do a concert and we just happened to run into him. His wife was there with him and we all enjoyed the moment of just talking.

This was a full decade before all the claims against him happened and he was a real down to earth person. What happened after that is certainly something I don’t endorse but those were crazy times when anyone could fall into that lifestyle. I knew others who did.

But back to the subject.... of course there are others who could speak out about it. But..... they..... aren’t.

 

[Pilky01]

Maybe you need to dump all the stereotypical crap you’re using as an excuse to shoot the messenger instead of recognizing that it’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

He’s currently suffering from the same condition that you’re opining that he’s done to other players. He has already acknowledged all of that, and has to spend the rest of whatever life he has left living with it.

So instead of being a good little boy and lock himself up in a closet like every keyboard warrior out there wants him to do he’s out trying to draw awareness to the problem as a living example.

As I have said, no zealot like a convert.

He can say what he likes but I have no respect for someone who sounds the fire alarm after they already burnt down the building.

He should work to be a better person and leave the moralizing and judgements to people who haven't left a trail of innocent victims in their wake.

But back to the subject.... of course there are others who could speak out about it. But..... they..... aren’t.

Because decent people don't feel compelled to make themselves the centre of attention by needlessly chastising and demonizing others.

Its extremely predictable that a person who played the game as selfishly and as cruelly as Carcillo did now wants praise and sympathy from people for "growing up".

 

[tarheelhockey]

He should work to be a better person and leave the moralizing and judgements to people who haven't left a trail of innocent victims in their wake.

It's one thing to be highly un-self-aware and take hypocritical pot shots at the league for the outcomes of his own behavior. I ripped him pretty hard in this thread, when that was what he was up to.

IMO it's quite different to be self-aware, admit to having been a big part of the problem, point to the factors that led him down that path, and work to address those factors so they don't have the same impacts on the next generation.

Other than just "sit down and shut up", I'm genuinely curious what you expect him to do to atone for his past behavior.

 

[Kranix]

something very disingenuous about a player of Carcillo's ilk championing the concussion movement. considering he gave out more than his fair share on questionable hits.

No more fervent acolyte than the converted

 

[4thTierSport]

I don't blame Carcillo, but when someone suffers through their life with spats of addiction and die at 35, it's just being respectful by saying it was concussion related. He had already taken a toll on his body in many other ways and to say it was the concussions is a bit disingenuous.

Also, I don't really get why we focus on concussions. I mean, Mike Bossy retired because of his back, other guys retire because of knees ankles. It's all in the same realm of the human body. It all negatively impacts their life going forward. Why is their such a focus on concussions. I don't really think they are "avoidable" without changing the game. There are protocols for every injury, concussion is just one of many.

Is damage to your back, knees or ankles going to "rewire" your brain for a lack of a better term? Don't get me wrong, losing mobility is not a joke at all but we're talking about conditions that can cause depression and other mental health issues.