by Chris Bodenner

A reader pivots off the football debate:

Something that hasn't been brought up yet, probably because the sport has a much smaller audience in the US, is the way in which the NHL has dealt with head injury and brain damage issues.  Hockey, like football, involves large men colliding with each other intentionally at a very high rate of speed.  Hockey, unlike football, also involves the occasional bare knuckle brawl between two (or more) players on the ice.  Because of the nature of the game, malicious hits are far more obvious than in football, and the fisticuffs are front and center. 

"Enforcers," or guys who are on a team primarily for their fighting skills and not their grace with the puck, are on every pro team, and their job is to protect star players from "dirty" hits, which the refs often can't see.  They protect players by fighting other enforcers (who often aren't even the ones who perpetrated the hits). Last summer, there was a rash of tragic deaths involving current and former NHL enforcers.