Slow WHL news day, but I just wanted to mention that I noticed that defenceman Mike Alexander made his return to the Silvertips' lineup on Saturday.
That is seven days after the Lethbridge Hurricanes decided that Alexander's fitness level and state of recovery from a concussion was such that he would not be able to play for them for a while, and traded him back to Everett.
Now, I don't care about whether or not somebody thinks he's out of shape; you can play with a few extra pounds, if it's true. But when it comes to the concussion, either Lethbridge's doctors overestimated the severity of the symptoms, or Everett's doctors underestimated them. In which case, should he be playing or not?
Or perhaps saying Alexander wasn't physically ready to play was just a convenient way for the Hurricanes to spin the story because of the other issue, which was that Alexander didn't really want to play in Lethbridge in the first place.
3 comments:
The Everett Herald article that ran after Alexander's return (http://heraldnet.com/article/20090113/SPORTS/701149857/1003/SPORTS08) indicates that he had no desire to play in Lethbridge and had essentially already left the team when the trade back to Everett happened. Alexander is quoted as saying he already had a job in the mines lined up and was already signed up to play for a men's amateur team in his hometown. There's no mention of the concussion as a factor at all. He did sit out one or two games after the trade due to concussion, but suited up Saturday and Sunday. He played strong both days, even had an assist on Sunday.
-- Andy Head
The concussion actually is mentioned in the article as Lethbridge's reason for believing Alexander could not play.
Either the two medical staffs had very different opinions on Alexander's injury, or the concussion was a convenient excuse for Lethbridge to justify trading him back to Everett, when the real reason is that he refused to play in Lethbridge.
I'm leaning towards the latter.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at, too, that when you read what Alexander said, it seems the latter is most likely the case. It seems his mind was made up, so it was in Lethbridge's best interest to get someting rather than nothing out of the trade. But who knows, for sure...
-- Andy Head
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