Goalie Alex Stalock returns to the Chicago Blackhawks after 1½ months in concussion protocol: ‘You don’t think it’s going to happen to you’

Chicago Blackhawks goalie Alex Stalock had never had a concussion before, but he thought he knew what to expect.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I thought it was going to be five days, to be honest. That’s just your mind, how it works. I thought (it would be) a week, I’ll be right back, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. And five days turned into whatever it may be.”

Forty-eight days.

That’s how much time elapsed since a collision with New York Islanders forward Casey Cizikas forced Stalock’s exit three minutes into a Nov. 1 game and resulted in his placement in concussion protocol.

Stalock and Hawks coaches thought he was “close” a few times, but setbacks pushed back his timeline.

He finally was activated from injured reserve Monday after clearing concussion protocol and practiced Tuesday at Fifth Third Arena. Arvid Söderblom was sent to the Rockford IceHogs.

“I wasn’t surprised it took that long,” Hawks coach Luke Richardson said of Stalock’s long road. “I’m just happy he’s back now.”

He said Stalock could play as soon as Friday against the Columbus Blue Jackets.

“You don’t want to go in too early and hurt the group,” said Stalock, who backs up Petr Mrázek.

Richardson agrees and wants to ease in Stalock with practices and warmups first.

“You can never say 100% he’ll start,” Richardson said. “Hopefully we can get a shutout win (when Mrázek starts against the Nashville Predators on Wednesday). You always want to give a goalie that chance to have that follow-up game. But it would probably be the perfect situation to have Petr play tomorrow and Alex Friday and get them both in before the (Christmas) break.”

He added that Stalock’s return would be “another reason why our defense has to play a little bigger in front of that crease. We want to make sure we protect the goalies.”

While Stalock said it would be great to get a start before the break, he’s just happy to feel good again and finally be cleared from concussion protocol.

“You have a lot of days where you come (in) hoping things are going to be good the whole time and you have setbacks, and it’s frustrating and you try to stay with it mentally,” the 11-year veteran said. “It’s a challenge that I’ve had to go through. It’s the first time in my career.

“Thank God I held off (having a concussion) this long. Unfortunately I got bit by it, but hopefully I’m over it and back around the group every day. It’s what I enjoy doing, so back where I want to be.”

Stalock found himself questioning when this day would come.

“I was told that early on you’re going to feel good and then there’s going to be setbacks,” he told the Tribune last week, “(but) anytime going through injury, you’re not prepared for that, you don’t think it’s going to happen to you. Mentally, it’s hard to battle with it.”

Stalock at times seemed reluctant to go into details about what symptoms were recurring, but he explained, “It’s hard to describe until you go through it.”

“You come to the rink feeling good in the morning, you go through a tough workout and you feel good right away afterward,” he said. “And then all of a sudden you go home and you’ll just be sitting on the couch and it hits you, whether it’s dizziness or lightheadedness and symptoms like that, and all you want to do is lay on your couch, lay in your bed, take a nap. And that’s just not how I am.

“You don’t live your life how you normally would. It’s your brain and you’re ticking different, I guess.”

Richardson suspected that Stalock, known among coaches and teammates for his energy in the locker room, couldn’t sit still and get the rest he needed.

“He’s that buzz saw guy, so sometimes maybe that’s hard for them to settle down and relax and it just lingers longer,” Richardson said. “His motor’s running all the time.”

As the timeline extended, Stalock’s frustration grew.

“You sit and wait and wait and wait and hope for better days,” he said.

Stalock had heard “seven to 10 days” for other players with concussions and assumed it would be the same for him.

“That’s what you’re expecting as an athlete,” he said. “And if it doesn’t happen, you get disappointed and you get upset, you get down. It starts stretching into multiple weeks and it starts to get more frustrating.”

There was a basis for Stalock’s belief. Doctors who spoke to the Tribune said it’s based on concussion protocols in professional sports leagues and the fact they’re not “one size fits all.”

Dr. Erickson Andrews led a study — “Concussions in the National Hockey League: Analysis of Incidence, Return to Play, and Performance,” based on documented cases between the 2009-10 and 2015-16 seasons — that was published in the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine. Researchers found players missed about 17 days and 7½ games on average after a concussion.

Stalock has missed 20 games, though he likely wouldn’t have started most of them.

The return-to-play study didn’t include goalies because of the small sample size compared with skaters, but some findings generally apply to players’ recovery from concussions.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all answer,” said Andrews, a senior resident at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “All concussions are created differently based off the severity (and) the number of traumas that individuals sustained in previous athletic or other experiences. So I don’t think that the seven-day (timeline) that we talk about is for sure for everyone.”

Dr. Caitlin Nicholson, a primary care sports medicine physician with Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush, said concussions are more common in men’s and women’s hockey, along with soccer and football.

“And depending on different studies, the rates of concussion will vary as far as which has the most concussions,” she said. “But I would say that those sports are consistently at the top of the list.”

Andrews’ study found a rate of 5.8 to 6.1 concussions per 100 NHL games.

Nicholson said some athletes can see improvement in symptoms between three and five days, “so that seven-to-10-day timeline does make sense because the first step on the timeline is for the athlete to become asymptomatic.”

“Symptom-free could be their headaches have gone away, they no longer have vision changes or balance issues,” she said. “It’s a lot more subtle stuff than what you would typically think of when you think of some of the concussion symptoms.

“Seven to 10 days might be where a majority of the athletes fall in, but we don’t consider something outside of the realm of normal in an adult until you’re getting to that 18- or 19-day mark to return to competition.”

Both doctors cautioned that they haven’t treated Stalock, so they couldn’t speak to why his recovery took more than a month and a half.

“I don’t know this athlete, I don’t know the case,” Nicholson said, “but I do know that balance problems and vision problems, if they are some of the symptoms of the concussion, they tend to take a little bit longer to resolve.”

Stalock sought more answers, doing his own informal research online.

“You do a ton of that,” he said. “And you have a lot of time to spend doing nothing. And you have different symptoms. The internet’s good for some stuff, but there’s some stuff it’s not great for and concussions is not ideal to go diving into. You end up (learning) some stuff you probably don’t want to read.”

Stalock said family members asked questions almost daily.

“‘How’s it going? How are you feeling?’” he said. “They’re curious, they want me to be feeling good, but it’s my call. I’m the one with the brain in my head and I know how I’m feeling.”

He appreciated having that support system.

“I have a good family at home, too, that has helped a lot,” Stalock said. “There’s been days where it’s not enjoyable through the night, and I’ve got a wife and kids at home that know you’re going through something mentally. It always (makes it) easier.”