Marty Walsh, the NHLPA’s executive director, announced at the annual gala for the Concussion Legacy Foundation that the players’ union had formed a CTE Advisory Committee on Friday night. The committee’s purpose is to help players better understand CTE and the damage that concussions can do to the brain.
“The long-term health of NHL players is of paramount importance to our membership,” the union told the Associated Press. “To this end, the NHLPA is in the process of forming a player committee that will be focused on learning more about chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The committee will be guided by leading medical experts in this field to help players better understand CTE.”
The news, first reported by Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, comes not long after Gary Bettman, the NHL’s commissioner, disputed links between playing hockey and developing the degenerative brain disease. In an April 2023 interview, Bettman explicitly told NPR’s A Martinez that he has yet to see convincing evidence linking the two.
“We listen to the medical opinions on CTE, and I don’t believe there has been any documented study that suggests that elements of our game result in CTE,” Bettman said then. “There have been isolated cases of players who have played the game [who] have had CTE. But it doesn’t mean that it necessarily came from playing in the NHL.”
Initial findings in a study from Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine appear to contradict that assertion though. According to preliminary discoveries, each additional year of playing ice hockey may increase a person’s chance of developing CTE by about 23 percent.
The study involved 74 people who played ice hockey at various levels, including 19 professional players. All 74 subjects donated their brains to research after their death, and 54 percent were diagnosed with CTE at autopsy.
The Mayo Clinic defines Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE, as “a brain disorder likely caused by repeated head injuries.” The disease causes the death of nerve cells in the brain and worsens with time. Symptoms of CTE, both physical and emotional, are not immediately obvious as they develop sometimes years or decades after the head trauma occurs.
Further research on the development and effects of CTE is limited by the fact that the disease cannot be diagnosed in living people. However, researchers believe the disease is rare among the population, increasing concerns about its prevalence in contact sports. There is no known cure for the disease.
Discussion about CTE and the NHL has become more common due to the unfortunate early deaths of so many of the league’s former enforcers. Most recently, the families of former Capitals winger Chris Simon and former Predators center Greg Johnson have blamed CTE for the players’ respective deaths in 2024 and 2019.
While the prevalence of fighting that players like Simon and Johnson endured has decreased in today’s NHL, the league still allows fighting in games, policed by five-minute major penalties, though players are required to keep their helmets on.
