"I'm 50 years old, I will die young," Peluso tells Westhead in an interview. ...

It seems like every year, somebody ends up dying because of what they've gone through playing hockey," says former NHLer Dan LaCouture.. ...

Mike Peluso says he is damaged goods. The 50-year-old former NHL enforcer, who played in the league from 1990 until 1998 with five NHL teams including the Chicago Blackhawks, Ottawa Senators and New Jersey Devils, says he has suffered eight grand mal seizures and has brain damage after playing in the NHL.
He holds the NHL responsible. He believes team doctors and trainers rushed him back onto the ice far too soon. ...Peluso is among more than 100 former NHL players who are suing the NHL, arguing that the league for decades has put profits ahead of player safety.
On one side, lawyers for the former NHL players, who also include Bernie Nichols, Joe Murphy, Gary Leeman and Craig Muni, allege the league has not taken seriously the health problems of its former players. They charge that the league’s high-profile working concussion group, headed by Dr. Ruben Echemendia of Penn State University, has been a whitewash. Even though this working group began its concussion study in 1997, it wasn’t until 2011 that the group published its findings.
Moreover, the former players allege, it wasn’t until 2013 that the NHL changed concussion protocols to require a concussed player not to return to the same game in which the concussion occurred.
A number of emails exchanged by NHL executivesincluding Commissioner Gary Bettman, deputy commissioner Bill Daly and NHL lawyer Julie Grand have already been released by the court and paint a picture of league officials seemingly as concerned about public relations benefits as they have been about player health and safety.
If the lawsuit ever makes it to trial, a jury will surely be asked to consider the following questions: What did NHL neurologists, doctors and medical trainers know about the dangers of repeated severe head injuries, and when did they know it?
Did team doctors put the financial interests of their employers ahead of the health concerns of players? And did NHL executives put their collective heads in the sand when it came to learning more about the dangers of repeated head trauma, and about possible rule changes that might have better protected players, even if it meant popular tough guys were sidelined longer between fights.


http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/lives-shatt...ries-1.2774366