Symptoms stopped Wheat Kings’ Liston

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/05/2011 (5560 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back home for the off-season, Brandon Wheat Kings goaltender Liam Liston graduated from St. Albert Catholic High School in Alberta last weekend, right on schedule.

His first season in the Western Hockey League, however, ended prematurely when he was sidelined with a concussion midway through Brandon’s playoff series against the Medicine Hat Tigers.

"It was the first concussion I ever had," said Liston, who turned 18 in April. "It’s something that I don’t really ever want to have to experience again. I just don’t wish that on anybody. It’s not a fun thing to go through — the way you feel — and hopefully I won’t have to deal with it again.

"I think it’s a little more prevalent with (skaters) — defencemen and forwards — than it is with goalies, with the body contact obviously. So I don’t think it should be a problem (for me) in the years to come."

Liston’s setback didn’t even happen during a game.

"Just in practice, actually, between Games 3 and 4, I took a bit of a shot off the head," he said. "It kind of went from there and it developed. I took my (concussion) test and realized that it was a little more serious than we originally thought.

"It wasn’t anything that was going to be career-threatening or anything like that. But at the same time, what people don’t realize is concussion is a brain injury and I don’t think the brain is ever something you want to take lightly when something has happened to it."

Liston and the Wheat Kings followed the WHL protocol for players believed to be suffering from concussion symptoms. Procedures are in place to detect head injuries and stipulate how long players must sit out before they’re deemed healthy enough to return to action.

"In the National Hockey League, they talk about it now, too, where guys have to go visit the ‘quiet room’ and get checked out by a doctor," Liston said while watching the Stanley Cup playoffs on TV. "For us (in the WHL), we do a computer test and they compare it to your baseline tests from the start of the year when you’re healthy and it gets shipped off to a specialist in the area and he compares them and lets them know which areas of the test you failed and what that means. It doesn’t take him very long to figure out whether you’re healthy or not.

"I was done for the rest of the series. We never really even put a timeline on (a possible return). I was just starting to get to that point when the series ended, so it was unfortunate."

Liston sat out the final three games of Brandon’s 4-2 series loss to Medicine Hat. Dizziness and an aversion to light and noise were his most pronounced concussion symptoms.

"I slept all the time while I was on the road with the guys," he said. "In Winnipeg and stuff, I couldn’t stop sleeping and had trouble walking. I watched the games from up in the press box, with the lights turned off, because that was about as far away from all the noise that I could get and it was the dimmest place I could watch from."

The well-spoken Liston has an analytical mind, but the NHL draft prospect doesn’t want to get too comfortable in the press box. In the heat of the playoffs, though, that vantage point provided him with a calming environment away from the hustle and bustle at ice level.

"It’s not fun and you don’t want to bring the mood on the team down, so you try to stay away from the guys as much as you can," he said. "But I think with any injury, you start to feel like you should be out there and it’s out of your control and you start getting frustrated with different doctors and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, they have your best interests in mind and they were just trying to help."

Ironically, his concussion came during the same series that the Tigers lost their St. Albert goalie, Edmonton Oilers draft choice Tyler Bunz, with the same ailment.

"For all the hype that there was before the series about us getting to play against each other — especially here back home, I know lots of people were excited about it — I guess it didn’t really work out," Liston said of his friend Bunz. "It was just odd that the same thing was a problem for both of us."

"Obviously, Tyler recovered in time to have a good run with the Tigers. I know that neither of us would wish that (pain) on the other again. We laugh about it now, but at the time, it wasn’t very much fun."

Goalies take shots in multiple forms, but Liston believes they’re relatively well-protected, not only with advanced equipment.

"With the rules in place the way they are now, you’re seeing a lot of cases in the playoffs this year where guys are getting called for goalie interference and stuff like that," he said. "I know that the referees in the Western Hockey League put a premium on protecting all the guys that play net. It’s a good thing, because there can be a lot of jostling that goes on in front of you and sometimes you can get bumped accidentally. But they do a pretty good job of taking care of us, so that’s great."

Liston rested after returning home this spring, but he’s now working out daily in training for next season.

"You try not to do much physical activity for the first couple of weeks after it, just because you don’t want to bring back any symptoms, at all," he said. "You’ve got to bring it along slowly. You need to rest."

» jmacneil@brandonsun.com