Ryan Boulding also contributed to this story
The optics of Cale Makar re-entering concussion protocol doesn’t look good for the Avalanche or the NHL.
Colorado’s star defenseman suffered a concussion on Feb. 7 against Pittsburgh. He returned later in that game before sitting out the next four with a head injury. After finally getting cleared to return on Saturday in St. Louis, Makar once again took a blow to the head and was sent to the dressing room for another look. He returned later in the third period, where Colorado led by multiple goals and was well on its way to victory.
Makar told Kyle Fredrickson of the Colorado Gazette following the Blues game that his visor had clipped him when he was hit by Alexei Toropchenko. The team later confirmed that he was not pulled by the concussion spotter.
Nor did the spotter take into account his previous concussion just a week and a half earlier.
“Well, they don’t look into the guy’s past,” head coach Jared Bednar said on Tuesday. “They’re just watching the play that’s happening on the ice. The spotters don’t know the history of every player in the league. They’re just watching the play and seeing how it goes. He was fine, skated off, felt fine.”
In hindsight, Cale Makar should not have returned Saturday in St. Louis after the hit from Toropchenko. While Bednar was quick to mention how the team followed protocol in both instances and is doing so now, it sure seems like someone should have stepped in and stopped Makar from returning in a game that was all but over and in Colorado’s favor.
The protocol was followed, but a common sense approach should have been taken by the team. It’s just not worth the risk, considering what happened in Pittsburgh previously.
“He comes back in and gets bumped again. They’re obviously related,” Bednar said. “I don’t think that he goes into protocol on the hit in St. Louis with the glove to the face on any other occasion likely, except for the fact that he’s just coming out of one.”
Bednar isn’t to blame. But also could have been the one to step in. This is all too familiar for the Avs, and for Bednar, with another young blueliner.
Bowen Byram, another one of Colorado’s top young stars that has suffered multiple concussions over the past several years, is no stranger to the mystifying and often confounding nature of head injuries.
Last season Byram missed nearly three months of hockey due to symptoms that wouldn’t abate. He knows how hard it is to weigh the team’s needs versus needing time to heal from such a severe and unknown injury.
“It’s good to be safe with those things, but at the same time you want to be out playing,” he said of his own struggle to get back to normal health. “It’s kind of [like] you’re getting pulled in two different directions. It’s a difficult thing to deal with.”
Byram confessed that he probably stayed out longer than he needed to, but he just wanted to know that he was actually finished with the cycle of good and bad days.
“It was tough for me because I felt like that for so long. I didn’t know what it was like to feel normal, you know? I mean, every day people wake up every once in a while and they’re dizzy or [they have] brain fog or whatever you want to call it,” Byram said. “The brain is still a pretty unknown part of our body, and… I think you’ve just got to listen to what your body’s telling you.”
The team handled Byram’s situation well. They even let him depart to get treatment under his family’s supervision. But given the severity of Byram’s injury, and its recency, the level of caution should have been amplified for Makar — not turned down.
Nobody on the outside knows just how severe Makar’s situation is, but many of us wonder why he was playing at all if minor contact to the head could spiral him back out of the lineup.
Bednar has also seen the uglier side of hockey during his playing days. It was at a time when concussion protocols were nonexistent.
“I dealt with concussions my whole career, except we just went back out and played for the most part,” Bednar said. “Like if you weren’t feeling good or you’re really messed up and it was obvious, then coaches would keep you out or teammates would say something or you’d say something.
“But looking back on it, the history, I’ve had multiple concussions and played that night and through the symptoms or through the fogginess, or the next night or whatever. That’s just what you did. It’s kind of what everyone did. No one really knew any better.”
But we all know better now. There’s continuing education and information and rules and protocols and… Makar is still facing his second concussion in as many weeks.
Makar twice said he was good to return, and both times, finished the game in Pittsburgh and St. Louis.
Both times, the team followed protocol.
Both times, Makar still dealt with symptoms after the fact.
The protocol still has a long way to go.