Sidney Crosby’s return from concussion uncertain
Pittsburgh — Look at your right hand. Close your eyes. Do you know where it is? Are you certain?
For months, Sidney Crosby was not.
While the rest of his Pittsburgh Penguins teammates spent the summer resting, working on their golf game and trying to get over a seven-game loss to Tampa Bay in the opening round of the playoffs, the game’s best player spent it searching for a way back to normalcy.
Two head shots within a week of each other in January ended the 2006-07 MVP’s season, put his career in jeopardy and might have started a culture change in a sport where toughness, grit and “playing through it” are among the most prized commodities.
Entering his seventh NHL season, the 24-year-old franchise cornerstone didn’t set out to be the most public case study on the sometimes mysteriously lingering effects of concussions. He wanted simply to feel better and get back to doing what he loved.
The road back has been more arduous than he ever imagined when he was removed from the lineup after experiencing what he has described as “fogginess” following game against Tampa Bay on Jan. 5.
Months of rest, of tests, of travel, of quietly (and not so quietly) refuting what his camp has deemed as misinformation about his condition, his health, his future have followed.
The organization did its best to give Crosby some space. Head coach Dan Bylsma and general manager Ray Shero checked on him occasionally. Teammates, both old and new, would text or call to talk about anything and everything but the state of Crosby’s head.
Penguins forward Jordan Staal says they texted about fishing. The words “vestibular system” – which focuses on a person’s ability to balance and work within a given space, the system most affected by Crosby’s concussions – weren’t mentioned.
“I figured he was getting enough of it from everywhere else,” Staal said. “All that matters to us really is that he’s healthy. All that stuff you thought you heard, I didn’t pay any attention to it.”
Private by nature, the combination of Crosby’s injury and his urge to get away from things back home in Canada during the offseason seemed only to feed the frenzy.
Wildly varying reports
He was retiring. He wasn’t retiring. He sustained a setback. He was skating at full speed. Each week seemed to bring a new rumor or theory.
Crosby remains polite but reserved when talking about the process, though he did spend more than 40 minutes last month addressing reporters while sitting alongside the two doctors who have overseen his rehabilitation.
Getting it back in a normal person takes time, and lots of it. Throw in the unique demands of Crosby’s job – namely making sudden movements and constantly recalibrating your balance to adjust to an ever-changing environment – and getting to the point where Crosby feels “normal” is an uncertain proposition.
A thriving vestibular system allows a person to trust his or her senses. Mark Lovell, the founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Sports Medicine concussion program, likened it to looking at your hand, then closing your eyes and trusting your hand is in the same place. For a person with vestibular problems, that’s difficult because the brain might be receiving faulty information.
“From a rehab standpoint, you work on gradually giving people exercises so that they’re increasingly able to tolerate the kind of side-to-side movement as well as have a better awareness of where they are in space in any given time,” Lovell said.
That’s part of the danger. Crosby says his training regimen was adjusted over the summer. It seemed to be whenever he’d reach a certain threshold of exertion, his symptoms would return.