Johnson is the first publicly known UND player to be diagnosed with CTE.
GRAND FORKS — Greg Johnson, UND's all-time leading hockey scorer, has been posthumously diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease affecting people with repeated concussions and head trauma.
The Concussion Legacy Foundation and Johnson's family announced the results in a joint press release Wednesday.
Johnson died by suicide five years ago this week at age 48.
Dr. Ann McKee, the director of the Boston University CTE Center, made the diagnosis.
"I had no idea what CTE even stood for when my dad took his life," said Carson Johnson, Greg’s oldest daughter. "Now understanding that the hits he endured throughout his hockey career damaged his brain, I want all athletes to understand the risks and I want the NHL to start acknowledging it exists and do more to protect its players so other daughters don’t have to lose their fathers.”
Several prominent hockey players who have died at young ages have been posthumously diagnosed with CTE. Todd Ewan (age 49), Wade Belak (35) and former Minnesota Duluth captain Andrew Carroll (32) all died by suicide and were later diagnosed.
Chris Simon died of suicide at age 52 in March. His family said in a statement they believe he had CTE, which can only be diagnosed posthumously.
Other former NHL players who were diagnosed with CTE include Derek Boogaard, Steve Montador and Bob Probert.
Those players fought frequently during their hockey careers. Johnson did not.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly have both denied a connection between head trauma while playing hockey and CTE, saying "the science is still lacking.”
"This diagnosis took my breath away," said Kristin Johnson, Greg’s wife of 22 years. "Greg’s death shattered our world, and we never once thought this disease was something he struggled with. He experienced very few symptoms that we knew of, but he spoke of his concussions often. I remember the exact moment he told me his heart condition forcing him to retire was a blessing because he couldn’t take another hit. He knew his hockey career had a profound impact on his brain.”
Johnson is the first publicly known UND player to be diagnosed with CTE.
"I’m so proud to have my dad’s legacy attached to this research and know the kindness and generosity he showed others during his life will continue to make a difference for years to come," said Piper Johnson, Greg’s youngest daughter. “He truly was the best dad ever, and to lose him to suicide was beyond anything we could imagine. It was awful, but we want to talk about it to help others struggling know they are not alone, and there is help available.”
Johnson played at UND from 1989-93.
He compiled 272 career points, a record that still stands today. He is the only UND player to be named a Hobey Baker Award finalist three times.
Johnson wore the captain's 'C' for UND as a junior and a senior.
"Anybody who was around Greg, he impacted them in a very positive fashion," former UND coach Gino Gasparini told the Herald after Johnson's death. "He was a consummate professional. He competed. He did things the right way. He didn't take short cuts. He was intelligent. He was one of a kind.
"There's no doubt, he was the definition of what you looked for when you were recruiting. He was a great player. He did it all throughout the game. But more importantly, he was one of those guys who went to class and did what he was supposed to do academically and he always did it the right way.”
Johnson spent 13 years in the NHL, playing for the Detroit Red Wings, Pittsburgh Penguins, Chicago Blackhawks and Nashville Predators. He was the second-ever captain in Nashville.
Johnson also had success at the international level for Team Canada. He won a gold medal at the World Junior Championship in 1991 and a silver medal at the Olympic Games in 1994.
Johnson retired from playing in 2006.
"Guys like him, they don't come around very often," Gasparini said. "They just don't."
UND great Greg Johnson posthumously diagnosed with CTE
Johnson is the program's all-time leading scorer with 272 points. He died five years ago.
Read more: https://www.therinklive.com/mens-colleg ... d-with-cte
CTE in Hockey
Moderators: Mitch Hawker, east hockey, karl(east)
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2560
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2560
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Helping players understand traumatic brain injuries
Helping players understand traumatic brain injuries
The NHLPA will form an advisory committee to help hockey players better understand chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the damage that concussions can do to the brain.
NHLPA president Marty Walsh said on Friday night that the CTE committee was unanimously approved at a union board meeting this summer. The former Boston mayor made the announcement after receiving an award at the annual gala for the Concussion Legacy Foundation, which supports patients and families struggling with the symptoms of traumatic brain injuries.
“The long-term health of NHL players is of paramount importance to our membership,” the union said in a statement. “To this end, the NHLPA is in the process of forming a player committee that will be focused on learning more about chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The committee will be guided by leading medical experts in this field to help players better understand CTE.”
A degenerative brain disease, CTE has been identified in athletes and military combat veterans who sustained concussions or repeated blows to the head. It can be diagnosed only posthumously through an examination of the brain.
NHL union will form committee to help players better understand traumatic brain injuries
Read more at: https://apnews.com/article/nhl-players- ... 513c7e3310
The NHLPA will form an advisory committee to help hockey players better understand chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the damage that concussions can do to the brain.
NHLPA president Marty Walsh said on Friday night that the CTE committee was unanimously approved at a union board meeting this summer. The former Boston mayor made the announcement after receiving an award at the annual gala for the Concussion Legacy Foundation, which supports patients and families struggling with the symptoms of traumatic brain injuries.
“The long-term health of NHL players is of paramount importance to our membership,” the union said in a statement. “To this end, the NHLPA is in the process of forming a player committee that will be focused on learning more about chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The committee will be guided by leading medical experts in this field to help players better understand CTE.”
A degenerative brain disease, CTE has been identified in athletes and military combat veterans who sustained concussions or repeated blows to the head. It can be diagnosed only posthumously through an examination of the brain.
NHL union will form committee to help players better understand traumatic brain injuries
Read more at: https://apnews.com/article/nhl-players- ... 513c7e3310
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2560
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Longer careers in ice hockey are linked to a greater risk of CTE, a new study finds
Longer careers in ice hockey are linked to a greater risk of CTE, a new study finds
For years as the link between American football and the degenerative neurological disease known as CTE has come into focus, research on other sports had lagged behind, even for contact sports like ice hockey.
Now, a new study from researchers at Boston University is the largest yet to establish a relationship between an athlete's odds of developing CTE and the length of their career in ice hockey, its authors say: the longer he played, the more likely he was to have the disease.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, examined the brains of 77 deceased male ice hockey players, whose experience in the sport ranged from youth hockey through professional play. CTE can only be diagnosed with an autopsy of the brain, meaning it can only be detected after death.
In total, more than half of the hockey players studied were found to have CTE. And the incidence of CTE rose depending on how long the player's career lasted: All but one of the former professional players — 27 of 28 in total, and 18 of 19 who played in the National Hockey League — showed signs of CTE, compared to under half of those who had played at the college, juniors and semi-professional levels. Of the donors whose hockey careers were limited to youth or high school hockey, researchers found CTE in only 10% of samples.
"We know less when it comes to hockey," said Dr. Jesse Mez, a professor of neurology at Boston University and a co-author on the study. "Most of what we've learned has been in the football space, because most of our brain donors have been football players.”
As in other CTE studies, researchers relied on samples that had been donated. Players who played at elite levels are overrepresented in the sample, Mez said. And selection bias is likely, as players and families who arranged to donate brains to researchers may have noticed symptoms associated with CTE before death, such as mood swings, memory issues or headaches.
"That suggests we're going to have more people with CTE in the brain bank than we would in the generation population," he said. "That being said, when you're finding it in just about all of the NHL players in the brain bank, it is still very concerning.”
What the study does not establish is how likely a hockey player is to develop CTE. "With each additional year played, the risk increases," Mez said. "But we don't know what the absolute risk is for a given amount of play in the generation population.”
Over the past 15 years, as awareness of the danger of head impacts has grown, all levels of organized hockey have taken steps to reduce the risk.
Still, in an interview last year with NPR, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman denied a link between professional hockey and CTE.
"We listen to the medical opinions on CTE, and I don't believe there has been any documented study that suggests that elements of our game result in CTE," Bettman said. "There have been isolated cases of players who have played the game [who] have had CTE. But it doesn't mean that it necessarily came from playing in the NHL.”
Football and hockey, Bettman continued, "are not comparable in terms of the amount of head contact.”
Research has shown that repeated head impacts accumulated over the course of an athlete's playing career can lead to CTE, no matter the sport. Besides American football and ice hockey, Boston University researchers have also diagnosed the disease in samples from athletes who played soccer, rugby and wrestling.
Yet, even as awareness has grown, advocates say more steps could be taken to make hockey safer at all levels of play. "I don't think we're where we need to be yet," said Kerry Goulet, a former professional hockey player who co-founded StopConcussions, an organization that works to mitigate head injuries in hockey and other sports.
Ice hockey has unique challenges compared to sports like football or soccer, Goulet said. Because the game is played on a hard surface — ice — and the field of play is surrounded by boards and glass, some impacts are inevitable. Players move at high speeds and routinely collide with each other or the boards.
"I did get hit from behind. I did fall down. I did bang my head against the boards," Goulet said.
He estimates that he sustained perhaps 20 concussions over the course of his playing career — only three of them formally diagnosed — and countless other hits to his head and body. "I remember those types of incidents where all of a sudden these black spots were around me as kind of confused and dazed." In the years since his retirement, Goulet has experienced depression, even suicidality, he said, symptoms that he links to the hits to his head he experienced as a player.
In today's game, players at elite levels are bigger, faster and stronger than they were decades ago. Players at all levels train year-round, rather than in the winter alone. But rule changes and enforcement have made the game more safe, especially for younger players, who represent the majority of those who play the sport, said Dr. Michael Stuart, the chief medical officer for USA Hockey and a professor emeritus at the Mayo Clinic.
"There is now a zero tolerance for any hit to the head. It's a penalty," Stuart said. "And some of these more egregious actions on the ice now carry very strict penalties, hopefully to dissuade players from getting in a dangerous situation with themselves or their opponent.”
In 2011, USA Hockey banned body checking for boys aged 12 and under. The same year, the NHL created its first Department of Player Safety and began to penalize all hits in which a player's head was the principal point of contact — a move that reduced the incidence of concussions in the league, a study found last year.
Still, Stuart, who also works as consultant for the NHL Players' Association, believes the NHL could do more to enforce rules against dangerous play and upgrade penalties for dangerous hits against the boards or aggressive checks from behind. "These need to be heavily scrutinized and aggressively penalized in order to dissuade this type of behavior," he said. He has also long advocated for a ban on fights in the NHL, which have declined over the years but still occur in about 20% of games.
Longer careers in ice hockey are linked to a greater risk of CTE, a new study finds
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/12/04/nx-s1-52 ... oncussions
Duration of Ice Hockey Play and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Read the study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamane ... le/2827223
For years as the link between American football and the degenerative neurological disease known as CTE has come into focus, research on other sports had lagged behind, even for contact sports like ice hockey.
Now, a new study from researchers at Boston University is the largest yet to establish a relationship between an athlete's odds of developing CTE and the length of their career in ice hockey, its authors say: the longer he played, the more likely he was to have the disease.
The study, published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open, examined the brains of 77 deceased male ice hockey players, whose experience in the sport ranged from youth hockey through professional play. CTE can only be diagnosed with an autopsy of the brain, meaning it can only be detected after death.
In total, more than half of the hockey players studied were found to have CTE. And the incidence of CTE rose depending on how long the player's career lasted: All but one of the former professional players — 27 of 28 in total, and 18 of 19 who played in the National Hockey League — showed signs of CTE, compared to under half of those who had played at the college, juniors and semi-professional levels. Of the donors whose hockey careers were limited to youth or high school hockey, researchers found CTE in only 10% of samples.
"We know less when it comes to hockey," said Dr. Jesse Mez, a professor of neurology at Boston University and a co-author on the study. "Most of what we've learned has been in the football space, because most of our brain donors have been football players.”
As in other CTE studies, researchers relied on samples that had been donated. Players who played at elite levels are overrepresented in the sample, Mez said. And selection bias is likely, as players and families who arranged to donate brains to researchers may have noticed symptoms associated with CTE before death, such as mood swings, memory issues or headaches.
"That suggests we're going to have more people with CTE in the brain bank than we would in the generation population," he said. "That being said, when you're finding it in just about all of the NHL players in the brain bank, it is still very concerning.”
What the study does not establish is how likely a hockey player is to develop CTE. "With each additional year played, the risk increases," Mez said. "But we don't know what the absolute risk is for a given amount of play in the generation population.”
Over the past 15 years, as awareness of the danger of head impacts has grown, all levels of organized hockey have taken steps to reduce the risk.
Still, in an interview last year with NPR, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman denied a link between professional hockey and CTE.
"We listen to the medical opinions on CTE, and I don't believe there has been any documented study that suggests that elements of our game result in CTE," Bettman said. "There have been isolated cases of players who have played the game [who] have had CTE. But it doesn't mean that it necessarily came from playing in the NHL.”
Football and hockey, Bettman continued, "are not comparable in terms of the amount of head contact.”
Research has shown that repeated head impacts accumulated over the course of an athlete's playing career can lead to CTE, no matter the sport. Besides American football and ice hockey, Boston University researchers have also diagnosed the disease in samples from athletes who played soccer, rugby and wrestling.
Yet, even as awareness has grown, advocates say more steps could be taken to make hockey safer at all levels of play. "I don't think we're where we need to be yet," said Kerry Goulet, a former professional hockey player who co-founded StopConcussions, an organization that works to mitigate head injuries in hockey and other sports.
Ice hockey has unique challenges compared to sports like football or soccer, Goulet said. Because the game is played on a hard surface — ice — and the field of play is surrounded by boards and glass, some impacts are inevitable. Players move at high speeds and routinely collide with each other or the boards.
"I did get hit from behind. I did fall down. I did bang my head against the boards," Goulet said.
He estimates that he sustained perhaps 20 concussions over the course of his playing career — only three of them formally diagnosed — and countless other hits to his head and body. "I remember those types of incidents where all of a sudden these black spots were around me as kind of confused and dazed." In the years since his retirement, Goulet has experienced depression, even suicidality, he said, symptoms that he links to the hits to his head he experienced as a player.
In today's game, players at elite levels are bigger, faster and stronger than they were decades ago. Players at all levels train year-round, rather than in the winter alone. But rule changes and enforcement have made the game more safe, especially for younger players, who represent the majority of those who play the sport, said Dr. Michael Stuart, the chief medical officer for USA Hockey and a professor emeritus at the Mayo Clinic.
"There is now a zero tolerance for any hit to the head. It's a penalty," Stuart said. "And some of these more egregious actions on the ice now carry very strict penalties, hopefully to dissuade players from getting in a dangerous situation with themselves or their opponent.”
In 2011, USA Hockey banned body checking for boys aged 12 and under. The same year, the NHL created its first Department of Player Safety and began to penalize all hits in which a player's head was the principal point of contact — a move that reduced the incidence of concussions in the league, a study found last year.
Still, Stuart, who also works as consultant for the NHL Players' Association, believes the NHL could do more to enforce rules against dangerous play and upgrade penalties for dangerous hits against the boards or aggressive checks from behind. "These need to be heavily scrutinized and aggressively penalized in order to dissuade this type of behavior," he said. He has also long advocated for a ban on fights in the NHL, which have declined over the years but still occur in about 20% of games.
Longer careers in ice hockey are linked to a greater risk of CTE, a new study finds
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2024/12/04/nx-s1-52 ... oncussions
Duration of Ice Hockey Play and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
Read the study: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamane ... le/2827223
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greybeard58
- Posts: 2560
- Joined: Sat Aug 21, 2004 11:40 pm
Chris Simon had 'severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation.’
Chris Simon had 'severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation.’
The family of Chris Simon has revealed the former NHL tough guy was suffering from “severe” CTE when he took his own life last year.
The Simon family released the findings of a post-mortem brain tissue analysis taken from the 15-year NHL veteran, who committed suicide in March 2024 at the age of 52.
They hope to raise awareness of the need for medical and mental health resources to be made available to former athletes struggling with the long-term effects of repetitive head impacts.
Simon’s family donated his brain to the UNITE Brain Bank at the Boston University CTE Center, where Dr. Ann McKee diagnosed Simon with stage 3 (of 4) chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
“Mr. Simon had severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation, and it is likely CTE contributed to his memory problems, depression and apathy,” said McKee, chief of neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System and director of the Boston University CTE Center and UNITE Brain Bank. “Individuals with a significant history of repetitive head impacts in sports who report these symptoms need to be taken seriously, and our team is committed to providing them the care they need while also continuing to advance CTE research.”
According to the Concussion Legacy Foundation, 19 of 20 NHL players studied at the Boston University CTE Center, including Simon, have been found to have had CTE.
Included in those former players are Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Bob Probert and Derek Boogaard.
A study released in December showed that the odds of developing CTE increased by 34% for each year of hockey played.
CLF CEO Dr. Chris Nowinski addressed the latest finding while taking aim at commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL’s lack of acknowledgement of the link between playing in the NHL and developing CTE.
“With each new diagnosis of CTE in a former NHL player, the NHL’s lack of leadership on this issue becomes more intolerable,” Nowinski said.
“Yet their denial strengthens our resolve to support the hockey community through our free Help Line and advance research focused on diagnosing CTE during life and developing effective treatments.”
Simon’s family issued a statement detailing the former player’s struggles towards the end of his life.
“Chris was suffering tremendously from CTE. We saw him declining but did not know where to turn to for help,” the statement read. “Chris’ short term memory issues were ongoing for many years. We also learned that he had lost most of his hearing, had daily headaches, light sensitivity, paranoia, was easily frustrated with tasks, had extreme anxiety.”
The statement added that Simon likely began suffering the effects of CTE in his late 20s.
“This has been extremely difficult on us, as the Chris we knew had been gone for quite some time,” the family said. “Looking back, we now realize that Chris likely started suffering from CTE in his late 20s to early 30s. Our entire family suffered for many years as we saw our son, brother, father, husband slip away from us and we couldn’t do anything to help him.”
Simon was a well-known and well-travelled enforcer. He played for seven different teams during his NHL career and fought more than 100 times while racking up about 1,824 penalty minutes.
Former NHL enforcer had ‘severe’ CTE before committing suicide
Chris Simon had 'severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation.’
Read more: https://torontosun.com/sports/hockey/nh ... re-suicide
The family of Chris Simon has revealed the former NHL tough guy was suffering from “severe” CTE when he took his own life last year.
The Simon family released the findings of a post-mortem brain tissue analysis taken from the 15-year NHL veteran, who committed suicide in March 2024 at the age of 52.
They hope to raise awareness of the need for medical and mental health resources to be made available to former athletes struggling with the long-term effects of repetitive head impacts.
Simon’s family donated his brain to the UNITE Brain Bank at the Boston University CTE Center, where Dr. Ann McKee diagnosed Simon with stage 3 (of 4) chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
“Mr. Simon had severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation, and it is likely CTE contributed to his memory problems, depression and apathy,” said McKee, chief of neuropathology for the VA Boston Healthcare System and director of the Boston University CTE Center and UNITE Brain Bank. “Individuals with a significant history of repetitive head impacts in sports who report these symptoms need to be taken seriously, and our team is committed to providing them the care they need while also continuing to advance CTE research.”
According to the Concussion Legacy Foundation, 19 of 20 NHL players studied at the Boston University CTE Center, including Simon, have been found to have had CTE.
Included in those former players are Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, Bob Probert and Derek Boogaard.
A study released in December showed that the odds of developing CTE increased by 34% for each year of hockey played.
CLF CEO Dr. Chris Nowinski addressed the latest finding while taking aim at commissioner Gary Bettman and the NHL’s lack of acknowledgement of the link between playing in the NHL and developing CTE.
“With each new diagnosis of CTE in a former NHL player, the NHL’s lack of leadership on this issue becomes more intolerable,” Nowinski said.
“Yet their denial strengthens our resolve to support the hockey community through our free Help Line and advance research focused on diagnosing CTE during life and developing effective treatments.”
Simon’s family issued a statement detailing the former player’s struggles towards the end of his life.
“Chris was suffering tremendously from CTE. We saw him declining but did not know where to turn to for help,” the statement read. “Chris’ short term memory issues were ongoing for many years. We also learned that he had lost most of his hearing, had daily headaches, light sensitivity, paranoia, was easily frustrated with tasks, had extreme anxiety.”
The statement added that Simon likely began suffering the effects of CTE in his late 20s.
“This has been extremely difficult on us, as the Chris we knew had been gone for quite some time,” the family said. “Looking back, we now realize that Chris likely started suffering from CTE in his late 20s to early 30s. Our entire family suffered for many years as we saw our son, brother, father, husband slip away from us and we couldn’t do anything to help him.”
Simon was a well-known and well-travelled enforcer. He played for seven different teams during his NHL career and fought more than 100 times while racking up about 1,824 penalty minutes.
Former NHL enforcer had ‘severe’ CTE before committing suicide
Chris Simon had 'severe CTE pathology in areas of the brain involved with cognition and mood regulation.’
Read more: https://torontosun.com/sports/hockey/nh ... re-suicide