A Duck Season in a Daze

Kevin Sawyer, the Mighty Ducks’ enforcer, wobbled off the ice after a fight with the Kings’ Brad Norton on Dec. 19. He was so disorientated that he needed to be pointed toward the dressing room, then led by the hand.

From there, he went to a hospital for tests. He arrived home later that evening, still wearing a tattered uniform, the whole ordeal a vague recollection.

The following day, Sawyer told General Manager Bryan Murray that he was ready to play. He wasn’t, and hasn’t since.

The nearest Sawyer has come to the ice on game nights is sitting in the stands with family and friends. Even that becomes difficult.

“One game, my wife and friends were all around me and I just became overwhelmed,” said Sawyer, who at 29 is in his second season with the Ducks. “Things were going on around me, people talking, and I became confused. I just had to get up and walk away, get out of there until I settled down.

“It is an athlete’s nature to fight through adversity and pain, do whatever you can to bear it, go out there and gut it out and play. You are told to do the opposite thing with this. You are forced to sit.”

An athlete’s clock comes without a snooze button. Years of training say to play through the pain. Years of medical research say otherwise. The voice that an athlete heeds isn’t always the right one.

NHL officials work to prevent concussions, tinkering with equipment, improving rinks. But each season a number of players are left in an ambiguous state, wanting to play while they are not being allowed to even ride a stationary bike.

The Ducks’ Andy McDonald sat out seven games after suffering a concussion Jan. 9, then returned, insisting he was ready to play. On the morning after his fourth game back, he woke up feeling ill and has not played since Feb. 7. There was no hit that caused the relapse. It was two months before doctors discovered his problem stemmed from a damaged optic nerve.

Sawyer sat out the last 51 games after suffering a concussion. He recently suffered a relapse and discontinued all workouts.

“Every concussion is different, but one thing that is common is you need rest to allow it to heal,” said Dr. Craig Milhouse, the Ducks’ physician. “That can be hard for an athlete. He is worried that he is going to get out of shape or that he is going to lose his job. He wants to get back as quick as possible.”

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The season was littered with such injuries, with every NHL team losing at least one player to a concussion. NHL general managers were concerned enough to discuss equipment changes at a meeting following the All-Star game.

Top on the list was returning to softer elbow pads, replacing the hard plastic ones with padded ones, which is expected to be implemented next season. Softer shoulder pads are also being considered. Many arenas have retrofitted boards, the immovable object that players are hurtled against by irresistible forces, installing hinges that make the glass give more on sudden impact.

This has been an ongoing mind game for NHL officials and, as a result, concussions have dropped slightly the last two seasons, from 124 in 2000-01 to 109 in 2001-02. The decline continued this season, although final numbers were not available. That has been due in part to the development of better helmets and a wider use of mouthpieces, league officials said.

“This is something we discuss a lot,” said King General Manager Dave Taylor, whose own career was cut short by a concussion. “We have an injury analyst panel that reviews the report on every concussion. We are getting more information, more knowledge, but not as much as we would like.

“When I played, you got your bell rung, they would ask you, ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’ If you got it right, you went back in. Now it seems we have learned that you have to give it time to heal. It seems to take less of a blow to bring the symptoms back and they last longer then.”

The waiting, though, is the hardest part. Especially for Sawyer and McDonald, who were reduced to spectators during the Ducks’ stunning upset of the defending champion Detroit Red Wings.

“There is nothing you can do but watch the games and that’s even tougher,” McDonald said. “You want to be out there. Everything you’re taught growing up is to play through injuries. Things are not that bad, just work harder and it will be OK.”

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McDonald and Sawyer had planned on better seats if the team made the playoffs, something in the front row, where they could think about hopping over the boards from time to time and joining the play.

Instead of ousting the Red Wings from the playoffs, they were being evicted by paying customers from seats around the Arrowhead Pond during playoff games -- having already given away their player comp tickets.

“We were scavengers,” McDonald said. “Every time we sat down, someone would come along and kick us out of their seats.”

In Detroit, they scrounged a pair of tickets and took some verbal abuse from Red Wing fans, as they were the only ones standing and cheering for Duck goals.

“I hate to admit it, I have stepped into the shoes of fans,” Sawyer said. “In Detroit, Andy and I couldn’t contain ourselves, we were jumping up and down, giving high fives. Their fans really gave us a hard time.”

As much as they wanted to be a part of the action on the ice, they now realize there is nothing they can do to rush the recovery process. It was a hard lesson for both to learn.

“It’s been unbelievable what this has done and how far the team has come,” McDonald said. “I’m so happy for the guys. But I can’t even think about playing right now. What I focus on is recovering. I have had too many reoccurrences to get my hopes up.”

The Ducks have done what they can to make McDonald and Sawyer a part of the playoff experience. Coach Mike Babcock has even teased them about being no-shows at practice.

“They came around one day and, ‘Hey, guys, haven’t seen you in a while, nice of you to show up,’ ” Babcock said. “I saw them every day after that. We want them to feel a part of this team because they are a part of this team.”

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The injury has allowed Sawyer to spend more time with his newborn son, Jack. But even that sends a mixed message.

“I look at Jack and I know he needs a healthy father, he needs me around for a long time,” Sawyer said. “But I also look at him and realize that I have to provide for my family. This is how I make a living and I got to get back to it.”

Sawyer had been living a Huck Finn life the last season after cooling his heels in the minor leagues for 10 seasons. He won a job as the Ducks’ enforcer and excelled in that role while being anything but a one-dimensional player.

That continued this season, until one punch made his future look fuzzy.

“This is the worst injury I have ever had, and I have had back surgery,” Sawyer said. “You can’t play, you can’t train, you can’t take any action to heal yourself because there is nothing you can do. You sit around and end up thinking about it all day.”

The post-concussion syndrome, the lingering effects of the injury, can sideline a player for a season, maybe longer.

McDonald admits he tried to play too soon. As a result, he sat out 11 more games. He was later diagnosed with a weak optic nerve, but the only workouts he was allowed were eye exercises lasting 20 minutes a day.

He was the Ducks’ most energetic player before the injury, on and off the ice, but he was in such a fog after suffering a relapse in February that he requested a media blackout for a week. He skated on his own Friday for the first time in three weeks.

“I just found the day-to-day things hard to do,” said McDonald, who has had two concussions in his career. “It’s hard to watch TV. It’s hard to read. It’s hard to sit there and do nothing. Every day, I wake up and wonder, ‘How am I going to feel today?’ ”

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Many prominent players have had their careers cut short by a concussion, including Taylor, who scored 431 goals, Michel Goulet, who scored 548, and Pat LaFontaine, who scored 468.

“You worry about the long-term situations with these players, whether this affects a person’s ability to learn,” Milhouse said.

After suffering a concussion, an athlete is four to six times more likely to have a second, Milhouse said. The odds keep getting worse. Eric Lindros has had six, Paul Kariya four, one of which cost him most of the 1997-98 season.

The longer symptoms last, the more stress a player feels.

“No one has an answer for you,” said the Kings’ Adam Deadmarsh, who suffered two concussions this season and did not play after Dec. 15. “They have advice, suggestions, but no one has a definitive answer.

“Some days I think I’m getting there and a day later I’m not. I have played through injuries in my career, but I know enough not to fool around with this one. I haven’t felt terrible, but I know something isn’t right with the way my brain processes things.”

Milhouse said a player should be symptom-free for about the same length of time that he has had the symptoms.

“This is not like a broken bone or torn muscle, where you can give them a timetable,” Milhouse said.

Sawyer isn’t looking for a timetable, or an answer, just peace of mind.

“I worry about my career,” Sawyer said. “I worry about what people will think, like, ‘Is he capable of taking another punch?’ This is what I wanted to do my whole life and now I have to sit and watch somebody else do my job.”