Crosby’s Concussion Overshadows Steelers off Week

I am not ignoring the Steelers brilliant but troublingly close victory over the Jets on Sunday. I am not ignoring a third trip to the Super Bowl in six years. Trust me I’m thrilled, even if it took me 12 long hours to de-stress on Sunday night. Just once for posterity…I’VE GOTTA FEELIN…PITTSBURGH’S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL !!!

Alas, we have 13 days to endure debating the endless minutia of the Super Bowl on continuous loop. At this point, I simply do not have anything of substance to add to the discussion. Sometime before they kick off in Dallas, I most assuredly will.

Instead I want to focus on a major issue on the Pittsburgh sports scene that is being shockingly undersold for its significance and severity. That would be Sidney Crosby’s concussion(s). The concussion(s) that he suffered somewhere between January 1st and January 5th (or both) and has managed to keep him off the ice and even out of the gym for three weeks.

Does anybody besides me think this is a MAJOR concern?

I give the Pens tremendous credit for how well they have played without Crosby and for the last three games without Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. That said, it’s fair to say their absence from the line-up has had a profound affect. Getting beyond the fact that I never thought I would see Craig Adams score the winning (and only) goal in a hockey game, the reality is the Pens have scored 4 goals in three games without 87 and 71. They are winning on grit, determination and Fleury right now.

I covered my belief that the Pens desperately need to add another scoring winger in a previous blog, not to mention every third conversation I’ve had with Christopher since March 2008. That however is not the issue here. The Pens could reincarnate Maurice Richard and it will not matter if Sid is not in the line-up. And right now, there is no sign of either of those things happening any time soon.

Let’s examine this issue for what it really is. The general belief is that Crosby suffered a “mild” concussion at the winter classic when he was hit by David Steckel and then suffered a second one five days later. That seems fairly reasonable to me based on the visual evidence. If that’s the case, Sid had two concussions in five days. That’s bad enough at face value but even worse when you consider that the first one did not heal before he suffered the second.

And I believe that’s exactly what happened.

We all know concussions are cumulative. We all know the once you get one, it’s a lot easier to get another. And that assumes the first one is given time to properly heal.

I’ve watched enough football over the years to get an idea of how the concussion thing works. When a player gets his first concussion ever and its of the “mild” variety (i.e., NOT cold cocking Heath Miller helmet to helmet 200 MPH), more often then not he is on the field the following Sunday. At worst, he sits out two weeks.

When they get a second concussion, the wait is usually longer. Consider Aaron Rodgers who earlier this year left a game with a concussion but played the following Sunday. Later in the year he suffered a second concussion and missed two weeks. The same thing happened to Big Ben last year as all of us along with Hines Ward and Dennis Dixon well remember.

For more context consider what happened to Miller. He took that absolutely brutal, helmet to helmet shot against the Ravens. I believe he was out for 18 days. I don’t know if that was Miller’s first ever concussion but it’s certainly the first I remember with the Steelers. If that had been his second or third, it might well have ended his season, or worse.

It’s usually when players start suffering multiple concussions that we seem them sitting out for long periods of time. Think Steve Young and Troy Aikman near the end of their careers. Or when they absorb a brutal and pointed hit to the head like the one Marc Savard took from Matt Cooke last year. Or like the one that Sid took from Steckel.

I appreciate that the Penguins are being ultra careful with Sid, as they should. He should not skate until he’s 100% symptom free and frankly I would not play him until he’s been symptom free for AT LEAST one week. That likely will happen because Sid will need time to get back in game shape when he ultimately does recover. Given that the All Star break is a free week off, it made sense for him not to try a comeback in the interim.

That said, we are now at three weeks and he is still having symptoms.

A few weeks back I wrote about the “de-evolution” of the Penguins. The premise was that with each passing year, the Pens are becoming more dependent on Crosby as the salary cap strips away their other offensive weapons. I contrasted that to the late 80s and early 90s when the Pens gradually became less dependent on Mario Lemieux. It got to the point where they were good enough to knock out the Rangers in 1992 with Mario sidelined thanks to Adam Graves' borderline criminal slash (yes I’m still bitter).

Well now you have a better idea of why I’m so concerned about this. When you depend so much on one player, no matter how great he is, you are vulnerable. I know the Pens are winning without Sid right now. There is a big difference between one goal victories over the Islanders and Carolina in January and beating the Goon Squad, Craps, or Dead Wings in May.

That said I have a bigger long-term concern. Concussions are cumulative. And Sid is not Vincent Lecavalier. He does not play out on the perimeter and shy away from contact. Sid is a gritty superstar. He scores most of his goals from 15 feet and in. He takes hits to makes plays and battles for loose pucks on the wall. Guys who do that sometimes get hit…hard. Pre concussion he can slough those hits off. Post concussion, one of them might end his season. Do you think just maybe Daniel Carcillo is aware of that?

And who knows if Crosby will be as willing to play his style of game after this. He admits this is his first major concussion. Nobody knows how he will react. A 10% reduction in his game might be the difference between the singularly dominant Sid we’ve seen the last 12 months and say a Jeff Carter. Can the Pens win the Cup as currently constructed if Sid plays even at that level?

I’m well aware that Sid is a smart player who plays with his head up. That’s in sharp contrast to the NHL’s poster children for concussions, Savard and Eric Lindros. I commented last year that while Cooke’s hit on Savard was careless and should have drawn a suspension, Savard did duck his head as he went to shoot which made him vulnerable. Well Savard suffered another concussion this week, one that may end his career, and I noted the same thing. He ducked his head and actually hit his head board level. That’s a player who puts himself in vulnerable situations.

As for Lindros, he refused to learn that no matter how big and strong you are you can not steamroll guys on every shift. And he paid for it. Of course once he stopped playing that way, he was never the same.

Sid is smart enough to skate with his head up and not seek out unnecessary contact. He’s done that his entire career. And that did not protect him on two separate occasions during the first week of January. A smart player can minimize the risk of head shots. He cannot eliminate it.

I’ve often wondered how many Cups the Pens of the 90s would have won if Mario could have stayed healthy. I’m convinced that the horrible, awful loss to the Islanders in 1993 was in no small part related to Lemieux’s recovery from cancer. He simply ran out of gas in that series. We know he missed the entire 95 lockout season and we will never truly know just how much his continuous back problems limited him in other seasons. I don’t want Sid’s head to become Mario’s back of the 2010s.

Some of this could be mitigated by Geno returning to full Geno status, which frankly we have not seen since June 2009. For the record, I fully support the Pens decision to sit him and let him get healthy as well. That said, with $17.4 Million of cap space invested in two centers, the Pens model for success is pretty clear. Crosby and Malkin have to be healthy and they have to be dominant. This team is not built to win the Stanley Cup any other way.

That reality and two Crosby concussions in short order is a potentially scary combination.