2017-2018 NHL Thread
- Thread starter Kin
- Start date
herman said:
Think it's about time for them to fire their GM and perform an exhaustive search for the very best and most qualified person to manage their team (who also must have been born in Quebec).
bustaheims
Active member
herman said:
I expected them to be better defensively than they have been, but I had a feeling they'd be bad. They basically have zero transition game.
WhatIfGodWasALeaf
Active member
Bender said:
No slashing means the skilled players can really do what they do, i?d say that?s the majority of the uptick when you add in the increased PP?s.
hockeyfan1
New member
Never expected the Habs to be this dreadful. Those first two columns are just brutal. Sacr? bleu!
WhatIfGodWasALeaf
Active member
Was watching a Tim and Sid clip talking about the Quick removal/non-removal debacle from last night and the 'one with hair' made a good point that I hadn't seen discussed before. When guys like Quick are reluctant to leave the game, as is always overwhelmingly the case, are they giving the NHL a legal argument in all of these ongoing and future concussion lawsuits?
"You see your honor, we wanted them to leave the game and they refused. Now after their careers are over; they've decided to blame us for their health problems when it was them that made the decision to go against medical professionals advice to leave the game."
I'm not sure if that's a remotely realistic idea legally and I'm sure it could be argued otherwise, but it was an interesting wrinkle.
"You see your honor, we wanted them to leave the game and they refused. Now after their careers are over; they've decided to blame us for their health problems when it was them that made the decision to go against medical professionals advice to leave the game."
I'm not sure if that's a remotely realistic idea legally and I'm sure it could be argued otherwise, but it was an interesting wrinkle.
WhatIfGodWasALeaf said:
I think the underlying argument is that information was being hidden about the long term effects of concussions, so in that case, the counter argument still stands because it's "I didn't have all the information I needed to make an informed decision". That wouldn't apply to last nights situation because the information is out there, but for the lawsuits that deal with players from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's, I think it revolves around the withholding of crucial information.
Kin
New member
WhatIfGodWasALeaf said:
So I'm not a Lawyer but I studied law a bit and have Lawyers in my family and I think this is one of those cases where people sort of confuse the stuff they see on TV in courtroom dramas with the actual practice of law. On TV the Law boils down to "arguments" the way they do more or less on message boards. You use language and logic to make a persuasive case and the winner is whoever makes the best case. The way I understand law of this sort is that an "argument" is more like "The Law is X, this is how that law applies Y". Things that win message board arguments like "That doesn't make logical sense" or "but that's fundamentally unfair" aren't legal arguments. I don't know how labour law sees responsibility in a case like this but my guess is it's pretty specific. There is probably precedent and statute about when and how personal responsibility can be waived and I'm guessing it's been tried before and a decent lawyer wouldn't have thought of this tact before.
It's not really hard to imagine a parallel. Lets say a forklift driver shows up to work drunk. His foreman wants him to stop working as it's not safe to operate a forklift while drunk. The driver, however, says he's fine and the Foreman relents. The Driver smashes the forklift and kills himself. Is the company still liable to a wrongful death action by the driver's family?
I think as a persuasive argument though there are three fundamental problems with the idea that Quick's wanting to play somehow reduces the Kings' responsibility here.
1. The idea that Quick "made the decision". Players, healthy or not healthy, don't make decisions about whether or not they play. The team does. A coach may or may not take a player's input into account when making the decision but if Quick says he wants to play and his coach says no, the coach wins.
2. The question of whether or not the concussion(or potential concussion) itself renders Quick's ability to give input on his condition for the coach's decision somewhat questionable. If one of your friends smashed his head hard enough to get concussed, would you even as a non-doctor think he was the best person to decide what he was capable of?
3. Whether or not you've created a work environment that allows for such a choice to be made freely. We all know hockey is a macho culture. Can Quick, or whoever, have said "actually, I don't know if I can play. Probably shouldn't to be on the safe side" without people thinking he's not a "warrior" or isn't "there for his team"?
Honestly, I'm not sure there's much here that isn't the basis of most concussion lawsuits already. Leagues have always defended themselves by saying A) the science was largely unknown and B) players chose to play when they could have said they were injured, absolving leagues of their responsibility. Typically leagues have had more success with A than with B.
I mean, the way I understand things, the whole idea behind concussion protocols is that you want decisions being made by medical professionals instead of people with a vested interest in winning the game. Saying "as a team we thought he shouldn't play but we ultimately decided to let the possibly concussed Athlete make the call" would not persuade me of much if I were a TV judge.
