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"We take concussions very seriously," says the National Hockey League.

"Oh really? That's great," says the sports fan. "How?"

"Umm well you see…" replies the NHL, trailing off and looking at the tops of its feet.

The latest evidence of the league paying all the necessary lip service to the necessity for proper handling of concussions, but without doing anything to mandate that its clubs or players follow those protocols, comes to us from hardscrabble Philadelphia.

Marc-Andre Bourdon had been called up by the Flyers on Nov. 21 when both Braydon Coburn and Chris Pronger were on the sidelines, and remained with the team for 39 straight games. He picked up his concussion at some point in early February, but tried to play through it so he could retain his spot in the lineup.

That part is bad enough. Awful, really. But then the team traded for both Nicklas Grossmann and Pavel Kubina just two days apart on Feb. 16 and 18, respectively, and sent Bourdon back to Adirondack. This prompted the first of two terrifying quotes from Bourdon, as told to Frank Seravalli of the Philadelphia Daily News:

"I guess if I had known they were going to make those trades, I would have said something beforehand," Bourdon said. "But when they did, I didn't make a big deal out of it."

Bourdon is, of course, partly at fault for not telling anyone, and he paid the price not only monetarily — he lost thousands of dollars by being on the shelf at the AHL level instead of with the big club — but also because he, you know, played at least a few games with a concussion. After being sent down on Feb. 18, Bourdon didn't play a game in either the AHL or NHL until an Adirondack/Syracuse game on St. Patrick's Day. Which brings us to the second shocking quote:

"But I didn't want to be one of those guys that they thought I was just trying to milk a paycheck. So, when I got [to Adirondack], I just asked for some time off. I didn't know what else to do."

So this was Bourdon's line of thinking, at the end of the day: "Well jeez, I have a serious brain injury that is currently making my life a terrible nightmare of dizziness, headaches, disorientation, but I don't want the team to think I'm a sissy, which they will if I actually tell them that."

It is, obviously, very troubling indeed that a player even thinks like that, but then again you have to think about the culture that engenders the mindset: We already know that the Flyers have an appalling disregard for the seriousness of concussions.

Recall how they tried to peer pressure Claude Giroux into returning from his back in December on HBO 24/7. Now granted, there is a big difference between a player of Giroux's caliber and one of Bourdon's, but a player is a player, and a concussion is something that should be treated seriously regardless of whether it's a star or a borderline NHL rookie.

Reality dictates this is not ever going to be the case, especially because the article Seravalli wrote wasn't full of quotes from Flyers management saying, "This is a terrible thing that has happened!" and "We want all our players to be as forthright as possible about concussions for their own sake, without regard for how we'll feel about it."

Instead, there's this from Peter Laviolette:

"He's been terrific. He's where he left off when we moved him back [to Adirondack]. He moves the puck well. He skates well. He's physical. He's done a really nice job."

In fact, the story doesn't even address that Bourdon played through a concussion, albeit successfully, and instead focuses on the tenacity it takes to compete for a roster spot on a Flyers D corps ravaged by injury. That includes, just by the way and totally coincidentally, Chris Pronger's career-threatening concussion problems of his own.

The implication, therefore, is that what he did is admirable, and not stupid as hell and dangerous and something that should bring shame on the organization that it allowed this to happen.

You'd think, given how everyone talks about this kind of thing, that this would be a huge story. A guy hid a concussion from his team, then missed a month after getting sent down only because it couldn't damage his career opportunities? Should be plastered everywhere.

Story continues