Last week, former Detroit Red Wing Greg Johnson was diagnosed posthumously with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, better known as CTE.  For the time being, all CTE diagnoses must be posthumous.  Johnson died by suicide in 2019, a bit more than a decade removed from 12 seasons and 785 games in the NHL.

After a successful collegiate career at North Dakota, Johnson broke into the league in the 1993-94 season with the Red Wings.  He would go on to play for the Penguins, Blackhawks, and Predators.  Unlike a number of other high profile CTE diagnoses among former NHL players, Johnson was not an enforcer.  He never had more than 50 penalty minutes in a season.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman continues to deny the connection between playing hockey and CTE.  It is a bullheaded stance adopted to avoid legal liability, shrinking cowardly away from the obvious connection between the sport and the neurodegenerative disease.

Bettman’s obtuseness has real consequences.  The NHL can and should be investing in further research into CTE, about which there are still serious questions to answer.  The issue is that one of those questions isn’t ‘can you get it from hockey?’  By now, we have more than enough evidence to answer that one.

Of course, Red Wing fans are painfully familiar with the effects of CTE via the tragic story of beloved Detroit enforcer Bob Probert, who stories pulls into stark relief the connections between the sport of hockey, addiction, and lifelong head trauma.