Montreal Canadiens forward Dale Weise was leveled with a big hit late in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals. He got up slowly and looked a little woozy. He went to the quiet room, supposedly was evaluated within the NHL’s concussion protocols and eventually returned to the game.
This is what we know about the situation.
Weise will miss Game 6 against the New York Rangers with what Montreal head coach Michel Therrien called a “body injury” on Thursday. However, Therrien says Weise doesn’t have a concussion.
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To steal a line from Montreal’s Daniel Briere, that sounds a little bit “fishy.”
It’s entirely possible that Weise didn’t suffer a concussion as a result of the hit from New York’s John Moore, a hit that earned the Rangers defenseman a two-game suspension. But it certainly raises some eyebrows when you start to connect the dots.
Protecting injury information is paramount in the Stanley Cup playoffs. You just need to go back to earlier in the series when Therrien claimed the Canadiens knew exactly the injury Rangers forward Derick Brassard was suffering from during this series for proof of that.
However, if Weise does have some sort of head injury, it’s not the best look for a league that has an entire department devoted to “player safety” to be labeling such as simply a body injury.
