The John Tavares Injury and the Media's Role in Traumatic Injuries

I'm going to try and keep this short but the John Tavares injury last night was one of the toughest things I've ever had to watch as a hockey fan. As someone who's been vocal about my struggles with four concussions and post-concussion syndrome, it always pains me to see players take head shots in hockey knowing that my own hockey career was ended because of them. Last night was different, it was the way in which his eyes sunk in the back of his head as he tried to pull himself up triggered my own concussion memories, and it's just something I'll never be able to unsee. The deafening silence in the building, the worrying look on his teammates + Kyle Dubas face, just incredibly hard to watch.

But there's something beyond this that really pains me and it's the media's role in dealing with these injuries. First and foremost, I was very upset at the fact that Sportsnet kept replaying the injury over and over, different angles and slow motion, even doing the same thing on their intermission panel discussion. Imagine his wife and kids, his parents, or close friends seeing this stuff on TV? Or alternatively, people who have dealt with traumatic brain injuries seeing the replays over and over, as I mentioned above, is extremely triggering and just a whole other level of trauma I wasn't ready to relive. I understand the need to find out exactly what happened, but there has to be a line and just showing the replays continuously crosses that line. 

Lastly, and this stuff absolutely boils my blood, we have the media's role in the aftermath of injuries like this. Here we have Le Journal De Montreal and the Toronto Sun using graphic images of the injury as their front page stories. I can't even begin to describe how wrong this is on so many levels, how an editor saw these pictures and deemed them okay to publish is sickening.

Have you no decency or respect for John Tavares and his family? Absolutely disgusting. My final message is this: traumatic injuries need to be dealt with more caution, we have to understand the trauma that it brings to many different people as I mentioned above.

Let's all take a moment to pray for John and his family and hope he makes a full recovery

Joel Forman - The Forman Faceoff