Randy Carlyle has shared a number of, ahem, interesting medical evaluations during his time as Toronto’s head coach.
His latest is no different.
In explaining what upper-body injury befell forward James van Riemsdyk -- “back spasms” to the layperson -- Carlyle offered up his own diagnosis.
“He got up the other morning, got to the rink, he had back spasms,” Carlyle explained, as per the Canadian Press. “That’s why it wasn’t a hockey-related injury. We all know that skaters get skaters back.
“It’s one of the things that hockey players have to deal with over the course of the season.”
Skaters gonna skate, skaters gonna get skaters back.
The injury will force van Riemsdyk to miss his second straight game on Thursday when the Carolina Hurricanes visit the ACC. The 24-year-old power forward is listed as day-to-day.
As for Carlyle, we’d be remiss without highlighting his other most famous medical theory -- from an interview with Sportsnet this past April, on how concussions occur:
“I have a theory on concussions,” [Carlyle] said. “I think the reason there’s so much more of them — obviously the impact and the size of the equipment and the size of the player — but there’s another factor: everyone wears helmets, and under your skull when you have a helmet on, there’s a heat issue.
“Everyone sweats a lot more, the brain swells. The brain is closer to the skull. Think about it. Does it make sense? Common sense?” said Carlyle, who said he’d never talked to a doctor about his premise.
“I don’t know if it’s true, but that would be my theory. Heat expands and cold contracts. The brain is like a muscle, it’s pumping, it swells, it’s a lot closer to the outside of the skull.”
He never talked to a doctor about it? You don’t say.