GAME CHANGE Ken Dryden October 15th, 2017

OVERVIEW: Illustrating the life of former hockey player Steve Montador to his untimely death at 35, author Ken Dryden details in Game Change the intersection of sports and science with regards to CTE and player concussions. Specifically, he addresses the advancement of the game of hockey, as well as its future. ------THE BRAIN AND CTE: Hours after he was found dead in his Mississauga home, Steve Montador's brain was harvested from his head. Placed in a bag of formaldehyde and fixed for analysis, it was then transported to the Toronto General Hospital and onto the desk of one of the world's leading neuropathologists, Lili-Naz Hazrati. Upon receiving it, she transferred it to a bucket and labelled it A1545 – her hospital's code for the 45th autopsy case of 2015. Then she began, slicing it into thin shavings, injecting those shavings with dye and placing them under a microscope for study. Three months later, she revealed to Montador's family the extent of what was buried inside his brain. As Dryden explains, it was riddled with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the same degenerative brain disease that had been found in other deceased hockey players – Reggie Fleming, , Derek Boogaard – and which has been diagnosed postmortem in hundreds of professional athletes over the past 15 years, particularly football players. According to Dryden, if Montador's story had played out a decade earlier, it might have shocked the hockey world. But it came at a time when such discoveries had begun to feel routine, no different than any of the others who lived their dream until it turned into a nightmare. But for Dryden, Montador’s story held greater meaning than that: a grinder who sacrificed everything for his team and the game that ultimately killed him. NOTABLE QUOTES ------STEVE MONTADOR: Throughout the book, Dryden details Montador's life. Interviewing friends, “Players want to play. They want to family, coaches and teammates to paint the portrait of a man who fought for everything he had, find every possible way to play. Montador was never quite sure if he deserved any of it. He was one of hockey's many grinders, always painfully aware of how replaceable he was. And according to Dryden, that self-awareness They learn how to fake good and drove him to be better than he was. But it also drove him to drop the gloves, throw his body into bad, you do the baseline test so corners and take hit after hit to the head. Yet such effort was rewarded. An undrafted defenseman, often. When you’re tested again, Montador signed with in 2000 and spent his first few years with their AHL affiliate, the you know how to fake good because th Saint John Flames. He bounced back and forth until the 2003-2004 season when he became the 7 they want to continue to play.” defenseman for Calgary. Nicknamed as “the Doors” with his fellow scratched defenseman Mike ------Commodore, he became a regular on the blueline for Calgary’s 2004 playoff run, scoring an “Whether they are intentional or overtime in the Western Conference Finals against the . Despite defeating accidental, whether they are Nashville, Detroit and San Jose, Calgary ultimately lost to Tampa Bay in game 7 of the cup finals. incidental or significant, whether After the NHL Lockout the following year, Montador returned to the Flames but struggled to secure they are from an elbow or a fist or a regular spot on the Flames’ defense. He was traded to Florida midway through the season, where he solidified his position as a 5th/6th defenseman over the next few seasons. Signing subsequent something else, it doesn't matter. short-term deals with Anaheim, Boston, and Buffalo, Montador finally was able to secure a long- The brain doesn't distinguish." term deal with the in 2011 – a 4 year, $11M contract. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to finish out that contract. From a few concussions while playing AAA and juniors in Canada growing up, to a sequence of them in his first season with the Blackhawks that ultimately ended his career, Montador was perpetually struggling through his own haze and mental demons. While he was able to stay sober for 7 years commencing when he was traded to Florida, he relapsed into alcohol and cocaine upon his contract being bought- out in 2013. According to Dryden, he attempted a comeback in the KHL with Medveščak Zagreb but only played in 11 games due to debilitating headaches. Depressed and unable to function as the “Monty” his friends and family knew and loved, Montador spiraled into isolation. As Dryden writes, “Nobody knows the exact events of Steve's last days. Nobody wants to know.” At 35 years old, Montador died in February of 2015, exactly three years, one month and seven days after taking a punch to the face during a routine Chicago-Detroit game. It was one of countless hits to the head during a lifetime in hockey, but in that moment, it altered Montador’s consciousness and led him into a downward fall that ultimately left him dead, two weeks before the birth of his son. As Dryden states, “Steve Montador, as his dad said, lived 70 years in his 35-year life. But in the last year, except at brief moments, Steve wasn’t Steve anymore. He was gone.” Hundreds of friends and former teammates from youth, juniors, and the NHL attended his funeral. ------CHANGES TO THE GAME: According to Dryden, part of the problem in today’s NHL is how much the game has changed in the last 60 years, primarily the speed and intensity. As he writes, "What happens is that you've got more players going after the puck. Full speed. There is less space, less time, more collisions and more forceful collisions because they are moving faster." Dryden illustrates such by describing the history of organized hockey, from the first indoor game at McGill in 1875, to the present, explaining the full complexity of its evolution and exposing its greatest myth: that nightly fights have always been key to the game. Through statistical evidence, he shows how fighting increased over time until it became a problem, and how hockey evolved from a rough game in which players took fewer hits to the head into its modern incarnation where they may take multiple concussive blows in a single shift. This wasn’t a rapid development. From discussing Wayne Gretzky, the WHA, the Soviet Union, , and the Broad Street Bullies, Dryden explains that all played a part in contorting the game into something that would ultimately lead to Montador's death. Moreover, he thematically explains that at hockey’s core, there has always been a historic compromise between performance and safety. Right now, “that compromise has gone out of whack.” For Dryden, only one person has the power to alter the game to prevent such incongruity: the commissioner of the NHL, .

Dryden makes no secret of the fact that he believes Bettman could make immediate strides to help reduce brain injuries through two alterations to the game: eliminating the ability for a player to finish their check and completely outlawing head contact. For the concept of finishing one’s check, Dryden argues that such action has led to more frequent and damaging collisions given the game’s ever-increasing speed. The other change is even simpler, rewrite the league rule book to clearly state: “No hits to the head.” As he writes, “It’s always about the case of the perpetrator, but what about the guy who gets hit? He may look all right, but it may well be that he is not all right, while the other guy gets a two- or five-minute . That’s not quite fair, not quite necessary and not quite right. What it should be is quite simple: if you give another player a hit to the head, there are no excuses; you’re gone!”

Given that all of hockey – from international to youth participation – takes its lead from the NHL, Dryden contends that Bettman is the sole person with the prospect to change course without ruining the game’s integrity: “Bettman’s smart, capable and experienced… If these changes are going to happen, they’re going to happen with him as commissioner — because this is not fair, not right and not necessary. Because he’s in that position of authority.”