PTO: anyone interested in Raffi Torres (Hurricanes offer PTO)

[ThirdManIn]

You didn't think/know shots to the head were potentially catastrophic to an athlete's long-term health? Come on now. Any person who has ever suffered a concussion is aware of the side effects.

Every hockey fan is as much a part of the problem as the players, because we've idolized plays like the ones you describe since the game's very beginning. To try and absolve yourself of any guilt on the basis that you weren't "well-informed" is fraudulent at best.

So you are contending that my statement is incorrect? Players in Stevens's or Messier's era knew as well as we know now the long-term effects of head injuries? Is this what you are saying?

Your statement that "every hockey fan is as much a part of the problem as the players" is a huge leap, and the supporting argument "because we've idolized plays like the ones you describe since the game's very beginning" is not only assuming that every single hockey fan has "idolized" these things, but that they have done so while well-aware of the long-term ramifications and simply being uncaring about those ramifications.

I have no guilt of which to absolve myself.

 

[PatrikOverAuston]

So you are contending that my statement is incorrect? Players in Stevens's or Messier's era knew as well as we know now the long-term effects of head injuries? Is this what you are saying?

The medical community may have not have understood the precise mechanisms involved, but absolutely there was a known correlation between head injuries and short- and long-term health problems. You can try and pretend that such knowledge didn't exist prior to CTE having an official name, but it was there- or did influenza not exist until we named that?

Your statement that "every hockey fan is as much a part of the problem as the players" is a huge leap

Why?

and the supporting argument "because we've idolized plays like the ones you describe since the game's very beginning" is not only assuming that every single hockey fan has "idolized" these things

It didn't have to be all. But come on- Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Hockey? Fight highlights? We have an entire sub-forum related to a part of the game in which two combatants bludgeon one another with their fists. Don't act as though we as a sport and as fans don't celebrate that stuff.

but that they have done so while well-aware of the long-term ramifications and simply being uncaring about those ramifications.

It would seem that way, yes. Note that we now have a name and numerous medical publications that discuss the issue, and yet fighting is a) still a part of the game b) still revered as much as ever. Again, HFBoards as a whole area of the site to discuss it.

I have no guilt of which to absolve myself.

Being willfully ignorant is no better than being accidentally misinformed.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

Yeah sorry, but I'm not going to share responsibility on this.

Torres is, for all intents and purposes, a post lockout player. His reputation as a deliberate headshot artist has occurred entirely during the period when we already knew the seriousness of the topic. This is a guy who STARTED picking up a reputation after Savard and Crosby went down, and has done nothing but build it from there.

There's no excuse for any player to be running around headshotting opponents at this point. There are hundreds of players in the NHL, many of whom are older and more rugged than Torres, and virtually none of them have managed to get themselves basically kicked out of the league for an inability to play the game without deliberately causing head injuries. I don't know or care what his actual problem is, but it exists in between his ears.

Agreed.

There's also a lot of revisionist history here on the kinds of hits Stevens threw compared to Torres. They're similar in that they're both predatory, but that's where it ends. On virtually all of his checks, Stevens had his skates on the ice and hit solidly through the body. Torres is a leaping headhunter.

Messier and those guys its a bit of a different story, but Stevens didn't go around throwing elbows. His hits were legal then and by the rulebook they would be today. that's not to say he wouldn't get suspended because of the optics of it.

 

[Lazlo Hollyfeld]

The medical community may have not have understood the precise mechanisms involved, but absolutely there was a known correlation between head injuries and short- and long-term health problems. You can try and pretend that such knowledge didn't exist prior to CTE having an official name, but it was there- or did influenza not exist until we named that?

There's a significant difference between thinking you need to shake out the cobwebs after a big hit, which is how it was when I watched in the 80s, and realizing that it can lead to a lifetime of headaches, depression, memory loss, mood swings, etc.

 

[The Thin White Duke]

Yes we had no idea when Stevens ended Lindros' career as to why. Or when Kariya was twitching on the ice that it was medically a bad thing.

Yeah we knew it was a bad thing on the same level as breaking a leg, I don't seem to recall anyone talking about it leading to severe depression, suicide, memory loss, early onset dementia, the inability to be in a loud or bright room etc. The immediate effects were obvious and deemed an acceptable risk, its the long term effects that severely impact quality of life people were ignorant about.

 

[ThirdManIn]

The medical community may have not have understood the precise mechanisms involved, but absolutely there was a known correlation between head injuries and short- and long-term health problems. You can try and pretend that such knowledge didn't exist prior to CTE having an official name, but it was there- or did influenza not exist until we named that?



Why?



It didn't have to be all. But come on- Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Hockey? Fight highlights? We have an entire sub-forum related to a part of the game in which two combatants bludgeon one another with their fists. Don't act as though we as a sport and as fans don't celebrate that stuff.



It would seem that way, yes.



Being willfully ignorant is no better than being accidentally misinformed.

OK. You're free to hold your opinion, but I feel your argument in support of that opinion is absurd, very flawed and just a way to try to deflect the blame from solely on the player to the fans as well. The influenza example is ridiculous. No one ever said that CTE didn't exist. Of course it existed. What you are saying is basically that players who threw high hits to the head and caused concussions are just as much to blame for CTE that may have ensued as Raffi Torres or anything else in a more recent era, during which we have much more evidence to show how damaging those hits can be, are to blame for CTE. Further, the league has taken some action, via rule changes, to reduce the amount of players who suffer from head injuries, and Torres has repeatedly either ignored or simply shown an incapability to follow those rules.

I do see the issue here, though. You're missing the point entirely. Raffi Torres could not plead ignorance, and his inability to change, lack of judgment and/or lack of caring, regardless of the reason, created a dangerous situation for players on the ice with him.

You're talking about blame and trying to spread it as far as you can as if you were an attorney litigating a civil suit or something, which this certainly is not. I'm talking about lack of caring or lack of judgement during a time when there was no ignorance defense. There is no evidence to suggest players who played similar games in a period of time when there was a lack of evidence to show the long-term and potentially-devastating effects of TBI would have continued to play the same way if they had been given information on the subject that today's players have and that Raffi Torres had five years ago. Bring them up if you wish, and cast blame to fans who were equally ignorant of long-term health issues all you'd like, but the point still remains that Torres, for whatever reason, lacked good judgment and/or lacked empathy for his fellow players, and, as a result, played a style of game that was very likely to result in brain injuries to his fellow players. Your points will continue to have nothing to do with mine if you keep bringing them up in your replies to me.

 

[bigwillie]

Yeah sorry, but I'm not going to share responsibility on this.

Torres is, for all intents and purposes, a post lockout player. His reputation as a deliberate headshot artist has occurred entirely during the period when we already knew the seriousness of the topic. This is a guy who STARTED picking up a reputation after Savard and Crosby went down, and has done nothing but build it from there.

There's no excuse for any player to be running around headshotting opponents at this point. There are hundreds of players in the NHL, many of whom are older and more rugged than Torres, and virtually none of them have managed to get themselves basically kicked out of the league for an inability to play the game without deliberately causing head injuries. I don't know or care what his actual problem is, but it exists in between his ears.

He grew up watching those kinds of players, refined his game in Juniors mimicking them, earned himself a 5th overall selection in 2000 executing those kind of hits, and finally made the NHL, and a name for himself in the league, based on those kinds of hits.

He built muscle memory, his reputation, and an identity as a hockey player in those formative years making executing "clean" hard shoulder checks to the jaw, all at the behest of teammates, coaches, general managers and fans who all heaped praise on those plays.

I will say it yet again - I don't think Raffi Torres should ever set foot on NHL ice ever again specifically because he failed to remove those hits from his game.

But, yet again, these hits are what everyone wanted out of him for an extended period of time, and you can punish the guy for not changing, but you can't hate on him but simply doing what he was told to do.

 

[Roboturner913]

Yeah sorry, but I'm not going to share responsibility on this.

Torres is, for all intents and purposes, a post lockout player. His reputation as a deliberate headshot artist has occurred entirely during the period when we already knew the seriousness of the topic. This is a guy who STARTED picking up a reputation after Savard and Crosby went down, and has done nothing but build it from there.

There's no excuse for any player to be running around headshotting opponents at this point. There are hundreds of players in the NHL, many of whom are older and more rugged than Torres, and virtually none of them have managed to get themselves basically kicked out of the league for an inability to play the game without deliberately causing head injuries. I don't know or care what his actual problem is, but it exists in between his ears.

Torres didn't start playing hockey after the lockout. Realize that he is one of the league's older players and part of a smaller subset that plays that kind of game and you'll understand that the kinder, gentler NHL is not the one he grew up watching.

Whether you or me individually rejoiced in that stuff doesn't really matter, the fact is it was a huge part of the collective consciousness of the sport until just very recently, in relative terms.

You'd be delusional not to recognize that for a very long time the NHL marketed itself on the idea that two very large men could end up in a 30+ mph collision at any moment. I'm sure if any of those old Fox promo commercials from the early 90s are Youtube or whatever they're full hits that we would now say were cheap, dirty, unethical, whatevs.

That's the hockey world that guys like Torres grew up in, and I'm guessing that a lot of that is baked into him at an instinctual level and it's something that he just hasn't been able to turn off, for whatever reason. It's either that, or he's as mentioned before, a psychopath that gets off on hurting people. And that is entirely possible. I just don't care to assume that's the case.

This is not me saying that he's a victim, far from it. I just think it's really unfair to demonize him like he's some kind of intentionally evil person. The collective hatred toward him is way over the top.

 

[CageRage]

It would seem that way, yes. Note that we now have a name and numerous medical publications that discuss the issue, and yet fighting is a) still a part of the game b) still revered as much as ever. Again, HFBoards as a whole area of the site to discuss it.



Being willfully ignorant is no better than being accidentally misinformed.

People still die or get seriously injured skydiving, and yet the sport is still legal and people participate daily. What is your point? Athletes know there is a risk to what they do, and it is in no way the fan's fault for cheering them on. THEY made the decision to participate, not the fan.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Torres didn't start playing hockey after the lockout. Realize that he is one of the league's older players and part of a smaller subset that plays that kind of game and you'll understand that the kinder, gentler NHL is not the one he grew up watching.

He played one pre-lockout NHL season, which is why I called him "for all intents and purposes" a post lockout player. Even though he was trained during a more physical era, he was not a guy whose pro career was based on Scott Stevens era physicality.

People are really playing up Torres' age as if he were just entirely too old and set in his ways to understand that he couldn't blast people in the head. Yet nearly every other player his age managed to adjust. Torres didn't.

I don't even really care that much WHY he didn't, just as I don't care WHY someone might choose to ignore a new traffic law. The simple fact that they're the sole person ignoring it at other people's expense makes them a dangerous ignoramus.

 

[bigwillie]

I'm just really shocked how hard this is for people to grasp:

Fans and coaches and general managers encouraged Torres to do the thing. So he did it, and did it well. Then, the thing became illegal, and he had trouble quitting, so he was punished as he should have been.

We can dislike him for failing to adapt, but without knowing specifically why he failed, I think the level of hate he gets, calling him "human garbage," is entirely inappropriate considering we, the fans, encouraged him to do the thing in the first place.

There is exactly zero tangible evidence he is an intentional, malicious, bloodthirsty *******. There is exactly as much evidence that he himself is a victim of a traumatic brain injury(ies) and is as much of a victim as the people he hit.

If he murders an infant tonight I'll gladly change my tune, grab a torch and pitchfork, and join the "Raffi Torres is Pond Scum who Deserves to Die" club but until that happens, he's merely a dinosaur and a relic of a bygone era who doesn't deserve an NHL job anymore, but is admittedly a monster we all helped create.

 

[EK47]

Deserves another kick at the can?! For what ****ing reason?

 

[Dr Johnny Fever]

If he murders an infant tonight I'll gladly change my tune, grab a torch and pitchfork, and join the "Raffi Torres is Pond Scum who Deserves to Die" club but until that happens, he's merely a dinosaur and a relic of a bygone era who doesn't deserve an NHL job anymore, but is admittedly a monster we all helped create.

You don't know the first thing about me but you're willing to blame me, while making up every excuse possible not to blame Torres for his own actions? That's disgusting.

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

I feel old reading this thread. 12-15 years ago guys like Torres were celebrated. Yeah, they were still villains. But they were the villain that everybody wanted on their team. Shane Willis was a promising young player whose career was basically ended because Scott Stevens put an elbow into his face at full speed, but the dialogue was never "Scott Stevens is an inhuman POS piece of garbage", instead it was "rookie needs to keep his head on a swivel."

I get that the game has changed, I really do, and those changes have been for the better. But you can't demonize a guy like Torres who is 34-35 years old and is only playing the game the way that was ingrained into him forever. I am not saying he "deserves" to play in the league at this point, but you also have to understand he's also the product of the league that for a long time marketed itself on big hits and reveled in them, even when it meant that people were seriously getting hurt.

Bryan Marchment also stuck his knee out on Willis.

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

Stevens hit him with a shoulder not an elbow, that's why he isn't referred to as a pos. Funny that that hit ended his career and not the actual elbow to the face he took from Bryan Marchment the next season

Marchment knee'd him.

 

[tarheelhockey]

That's such a ****ed up thing to say. Especially considering that his poor decision making and judgment may be because of him already suffering a TBI.

You keep saying this like it's something you can't pull out of the bag for everyone who has ever done anything wrong, ever.

If Torres can't line up his hits safely because he has a thinking problem, then it's morally repugnant for him to still be out there trying to do it and giving other people brain injuries in the process.

 

[Spazkat]

DUIs are a **** analogy, because no one was brought up being told that DUIs were good, clean, hard driving. No one was being featured in highlight packages on ESPN for DUIs. No one was given a spot on the team because of their DUI ability. No one spent years practicing and honing their DUI skills only for scientific advances to demonstrate their harm and then be more tightly regulated. You get my point.

I get your argument on one level though, that you can only make a mistake so many times, but I don't think these are as massive errors in judgment as everyone wants to believe they were. Most were split-second, centimeter wide errors. Also, see Cryptic's post surmising that these hits might have been brain-injury related themselves.

Lets rephrase that to a domestic violence analogy then. Way back when beating your wife was considered and acceptable manly way to keep order in the household. Think Voynov should get more kicks at the can too?

 

[Channelcat]

Torres won't get a deal. He's a hard working, intense veteran. Just the kind of guy you bring in to kickstart your TC.

 

[bigwillie]

You keep saying this like it's something you can't pull out of the bag for everyone who has ever done anything wrong, ever.

If Torres can't line up his hits safely because he has a thinking problem, then it's morally repugnant for him to still be out there trying to do it and giving other people brain injuries in the process.

I've repeated in this thread numerous times that I absolutely, unequivocally never want Raffi Torres to play another NHL game, ever again. My argument has nothing to do with whether or not he should be punished - it has everything to do with the hate, vitriol, and repugnance coming from NHL fans who helped create the culture that motivated Raffi Torres to become the player he is/was in the first place.

Lets rephrase that to a domestic violence analogy then. Way back when beating your wife was considered and acceptable manly way to keep order in the household. Think Voynov should get more kicks at the can too?

All of these analogies - DUIs, wife beating, whatever - are imperfect at best, trash at worst. Has anyone ever made a career, earning 1,000,000+ per year, beating their wife? Were they encouraged at a young age to beat their spouse by guys the idols they were able to watch on TV? Has anyone every been drafted 5th overall for their ability to lay one on the jaw of their significant other?

Finally, yet again, I DON'T ****ING THINK TORRES DESERVES ANOTHER "KICK AT THE CAN." I don't know how many times I can say this.

 

[Mattilaus]

Lets rephrase that to a domestic violence analogy then. Way back when beating your wife was considered and acceptable manly way to keep order in the household. Think Voynov should get more kicks at the can too?

Domestic violence is a **** analogy, because no one was brought up being told that domestic violence is good, clean, relationship management. No one was being featured in highlight packages on ESPN for domestic violence. No one was given a spot on the team because of their domestic violence ability. No one spent years practicing and honing their domestic violence skills only for scientific advances to demonstrate their harm and then be more tightly regulated.

Response still works.

 

[RedMenace]

Never forget, Blue Jackets fans:

Never forget.

 

[StevenB]

I heard Toronto offered him a PTO, but never took his call when he wanted to accept

 

[tarheelhockey]

Never forget, Blue Jackets fans:

Never forget.

That is still one of the weirdest images I've ever seen.

 

[Raymondo316]

I heard Toronto offered him a PTO, but never took his call when he wanted to accept

No chance of that

The sharks traded us him last year and we didnt want him anywhere near the team or even the Marlies

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

No chance of that

The sharks traded us him last year and we didnt want him anywhere near the team or even the Marlies

It was a paper deal. He was never going to play in Toronto because he was hurt.

Perhaps that would have been the case if he wasn't hurt, but he was. Add the fact Toronto blatantly tanked the entire 2nd half of the season, so let's dismiss this high-and-mighty attitude.