A better helmet would not have stopped the internal action in Sidney Crosby's skull that caused his concussion. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

Last month, we spoke with Hockey Hall of Famer Ken Dryden, who has been publicly discussing his concerns about concussions and traumatic brain injuries in hockey. Nearly every time this subject comes up, emails arrive and comments are posted here wondering why the sport does not merely improve the helmet, which should go a long way toward solving the problem.

So it was worth a phone call to Minnesota to discuss that question and some other concussion-related topics in hockey with  the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Michael Stuart, that institution’s  Vice-Chair of Orthopedic Surgery and the co-director of its Sports Medicine Center. Dr. Stuart is also the Chief Medical Officer of USA Hockey and a hockey dad — he has three sons who have played in the NHL: Mike, who played briefly with the Blues; Mark, with the Bruins and now with the Jets; and Colin, with the Thrashers and Sabres. Colin is currently captain of Buffalo’s Rochester AHL team.

Dr. Stuart is certainly a good person to evaluate the helmet issue, even as manufacturers claim their new designs will help limit concussions. He, along with his colleague at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Aynsley Smith, created the first Ice Hockey Summit: Action on Concussions  in Oct. 2010, to specifically address this rising problem in the sport. They plan a second such summit in the Fall of 2013.

“One of the conclusions of the group, and also the prioritized action items of this summit, was to look at hockey helmets,” Dr. Stuart told Red Light. ”I’m not giving up on them. I think we need to continue to look at materials, designs and novel technologies. But the bottom line is the hockey helmet does what it was designed to do, which is to prevent skull fractures and intracranial bleeding.

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First-year coach MIke Yeo has quietly made his low-profile Wild into an early Western Conference leader. (Brace Hemmelgarn-US PRESSWIRE)

Far away from the glaring spotlight of expectation that will shine on high-profile first-time NHL head coaches Dale Hunter and Kirk Muller, a little-known former Penguins assistant is doing some pretty special things in his first crack at running a team.

Mike Yeo, the NHL’s youngest coach,  has his Minnesota Wild tied with the Chicago Blackhawks for first place overall in Western Conference after a 3-1 win over Tampa Bay on Monday night.  Yeo may be less celebrated than the two former NHL captains who were newly installed in Washington and Raleigh, but they’d be happy to have his level of achievement after their first 24 games.
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In one of the season's most bizarre scenes, Braydon Coburn and other Flyers defensemen simply held the puck while waiting in vain for the Lightning to abandon their 1-3-1 trap. (Photo by Chris O'Meara/AP)

One of the most anticipated topics discussed at the GMs meetings in Toronto on Tuesday was the fallout from the Flyers-Lightning game last week.  The managers declined to consider any new rules in response to the bizarre scenes  in which Philadelphia refused to advance the puck after Tampa Bay went into its 1-3-1 defense. No Lightning player pressured the puck and the closest Tampa Bay skater was back on the offensive blueline, but the Flyers refused to move. That could change if we see a re-run of that strangeness in the future.

Most interesting were the remarks of Flyers GM Paul Holmgren, who indicated that he was not comfortable with the passive way his team responded to the trap. “To me, it just didn’t sit right,” he said of the  ploy.
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Isn’t that video above terrific? On Wednesday night, Tampa Bay’s 1-3-1 defense against Philadelphia forced Mike Milbury to storm off the set in Versus’s studio during the second intermission, and that’s reason enough for us to nominate the Lightning’s Guy Boucher as not just NHL Coach of Year, but also for the The George Foster Peabody Award for distinguished and meritorious public service to television.

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