The National Hockey League has filed subpoenas against three Boston University employees in regards to their research on concussions.
Chris Nowinski, Ann McKee and Robert Stern all have until Oct. 1 to hand over their concussion research and any communications with NHL officials, current and former NHL players, NHL agents and family members of players, TSN reported on Thursday.
Specifically, Nowinski, co-director of the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at BU, has pressured major professional sports leagues in the United States lately to publicly recognize the connection between sports and brain damage.
The connection is rooted in chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease that is linked to Alzheimer’s and other mental diseases. Nowinski, along with McKee and Stern, have conducted research on deceased NHL player’s brains and concluded that they suffered from CTE in one form or another.
The subpoenas coincide with a joint study published by BU and the Department of Veterans Affairs that found 87 out of 91 deceased National Football League players displayed signs of CTE.
The NHL has been in its own national concussion spotlight as of late, as commissioner Gary Bettman was skeptical of the correlation between hockey and brain damage when speaking in Chicago in May.
“From a medical science standpoint, there is no evidence yet that one leads to the other,” Bettman said. “I know there are a lot of theories, but if you ask people who study it, they tell you there is no statistical correlation that can definitely make that conclusion.”
Furthermore, a group of roughly 80 former players have filed a lawsuit against the NHL in federal court in Minnesota. The lawsuit is claiming that players with head injuries should be examined by independent doctors and fully healed before they are allowed to return to the ice.
Jonathan's a New Englander who writes about sports, features and politics. He currently covers men's hockey at BU, worked as Sports Editor during the spring 2016 semester and is on the FreeP's Board of Directors. Toss him a follow on Twitter at @jonathansigal.
