It's the late shift and this is Paul's blog, not George's, but I'm going to ediatorialize a bit here: for better or worse, the new health care laws in the U.S. will allow someone with a crapton of preexisting health conditions--me--to qualify for health insurance coverage for the first time in eight years, and I'd admittedly been thinking about buying a pair of inline skates to tool around the neighborhood.
But a self-arrested stumble down the stairs taking down the trash a week ago put a scare into me. I suffered a severe concussion around the time my previous insurance coverage expired, and I still deal with some lingering effects. Feeling a little "wobbly" after grabbing myself on the railing was very scary, and that was just dealing with one concussion that went untreated save a precautionary CT scan (I literally got a pamphlet from Garden City Hospital that said, "You have a concussion! Here are some symptoms...").
I don't know if the players who sued the NHL for the lingering effects of concussion damage have a chance in hell of earning an NFL-style payout--I doubt it--but I sure as hell know how scary it is to know that you're not going to be quite the same after having one's "noodle" scrambled.
I think that it's very brave of people like the suit's headliners in Rick Vaive and Gary Leeman (as well as honorary Red Wings Alumni Association skater Darren Banks) to possibly alienate themselves from their NHL veterans' brotherhood and certainly shear any ties between themselves and the league for the sake of trying to delve into murky legal waters.
Yahoo Sports' Nicholas J. Cotsonika asked legal experts about the lawsuit, and he found that its chances of succeeding are "foggy" at best:
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