You can’t help but hold your breath. Or at least I can’t. When you take a moment to think of how bad an injury can be to a hockey player, you just stare and wait for a sign. Just one sign that they will be alright. You wait for motion. You wait for that half-hearted ‘thumbs-up’ sign that says they’re not unconscious. When it doesn’t come, that’s when you worry.

I’ve watched the hit a few times. I really cannot comment whether it was clean or not. I can’t really be objective. I will say that the bump that Okposo took seconds before more than likely threw him off and that’s why his head was down at the time. Kyle is not usually one of the players I scream at from the top of 201, “Keep your head up!” No. He’s better than that.

But there he was, hit by a truck, helmet knocked off and down on the ice. Retaliations ensued, which were commendable; the most shocking one for me was Biron skating out to center ice to have a little chat with Kiprusoff. But while the focus was on all that was happening around him, Kyle lay on the ice.

As per NHL rules, the hit was not replayed in the arena. I couldn’t help it, but horrible flashbacks of Kevin Colley replayed in my mind over and over. What if? What if his neck is broken? What if he is paralyzed? What if he never plays again?

For me, for the rest of the game, it wasn’t about the score, the season or the Islanders. It was only about Kyle, the talented young man with his whole life ahead of him. It wasn’t even about Phaneuf at that point. It wasn’t about “Who would make him pay,” Morency or Haley, it was only about the recurring thought of “what if?”

I was there when Kevin Colley played his last game. He insisted on not getting on the stretcher. My Rescue Captain husband always wonders if that made a difference in his ability to continue to play. I had just left the arena the night Jason Blake was hit in a corner and taken off the ice unconscious and seemingly dead. I was also there when Doug Weight laid out a boy from the new generation of Sutters.

The difference in all these cases, as opposed to last night, was remorse. The player who doled out the devastating hits in all these cases showed extreme remorse. Did anyone notice if Dion Phaneuf exhibited any remorse for potentially destroying a young, promising career?

I watched Doug Weight after his hit that night. He was visibly shaken, concerned and as the game went on, increasingly emotional. As a veteran of the game, taking out a rookie was not what he wanted to do. Please, let me see some of this concern and remorse out of Phaneuf.

Open ice hits are part of the game. Okay, I can live with that. Last season there was supposedly an NHL crack down on “hits to the head.” Even better! Sounded like an important mandate. But the question of what constitutes the “head” became a grey area designed to protect the stars of the game and penalize the grinders. Can’t we just say that anything above the shoulders is considered the “head” and go from there? How about that?

Will Dion receive anything for this “clean” hit? I don’t know.

How long will it take Kyle to FULLY recover from his concussion? I don’t know that either. Concussions are funny things. They linger. You feel fine one minute and the next you’re throwing up in a corner. They also start a tally sheet on your health. Once you’ve had one, people start counting and waiting. They’re not like broken bones that heal. You can break numerous bones in your body and it will never really be “counted” or watched.

Think of all the NHL players’ careers that were cut short by concussions. Think of all of them who wore Islanders sweaters. Yeah, exactly.

Bonus points to Biron for not only getting involved on the ice during the scrum, but also for getting into it with a fan from a few rows behind him. I’m not sure if he had security actually remove him or not. But I now know why Garth Snow signed him. However, the incident so rattled Marty that he let up two goals before being replaced by Kevin Poulin.
Matt Moulson should be commended for his two goals under difficult conditions, while Trevor Smith and Blake Comeau also did their jobs. The Calgary radio announcers were brutal to Brendon Witt reminding everyone of his -34 on the stat chart for last season. Ouch!

But still, no matter what the bright points were in the game, or what I am looking forward to this season, I STILL can’t shake the thought of Kyle and “What if.”

Oh, and they lost 5 – 4 in the shoot out. But it doesn’t really matter.

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