By Ian Mendes, Sportsnet.ca
Steve Downie phoned Dean McAmmond on Wednesday to apologize for his illegal hit that sent the Senators forward to the hospital.
And McAmmond says he accepted the apology.
“I just said thanks for the call and I’m going to choose to believe that he is sincere about it,” said McAmmond in front of Ottawa reporters on Thursday morning.
McAmmond was taken off the ice on a stretcher on Tuesday night, after he was checked illegally in the head by the Flyers forward.
He says he has no memory of the play on the ice, but has watched the television replays repeatedly in the past 24 hours.
“I didn’t remember any of it,” said McAmmond, who appeared to be in good spirits on Thursday.
“I only remember sitting down to start the second period. And then the next thing I remember I was lying on the trainer’s table.”
While McAmmond has forgiven Downie for the hit on a personal level, he does believe a suspension is in order.
“The timing of this whole hit couldn’t be better. We watched a video on blows to the head in training camp,” he explained.
“For this hit to come about now, it makes it more amplified. It’s up to the league that they send a message to cause guys to think about hits like that.”
Ottawa head coach John Paddock was even more direct about his demands for a suspension against Downie – a player with a reputation for playing on the edge at the junior level.
“For the good of Steve Downie, he needs to be suspended for a long time,” said Paddock. “For him to be in the NHL when he’s 24, the best thing for the league to do is to take it away from him for a while. We all know his history in the OHL. Hockey is the most important thing to him. So take it away from him.”
Senators general manager Bryan Murray also met with the media and said McAmmond is out indefinitely – and will likely not be available to the team when the regular season opens on October 3rd in Toronto.
“I would suspect the earliest he could start to do anything would be two weeks from now,” said general manager Bryan Murray, who added McAmmond will come in to the rink for daily off-ice treatment.
But McAmmond seemed more upbeat about his prognosis and potential return to the lineup. He is not experiencing any problems with his vision, which he is taking as a positive sign.
“I feel pretty normal, except for the body stiffness. I don’t have any idea right now (on a timetable), I have to wait until I’m symptom-free,” the center said.
He was released from an Ottawa hospital on Wednesday morning, after it was determined he suffered no broken bones in the incident. Murray added on Thursday that McAmmond did sustain muscle damage to his neck and shoulders on the hit from Downie.
But the club is mostly worried because McAmmond has a history with concussions. The 34-year-old suffered a concussion in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals in June against Anaheim, when he was elbowed in the head by Ducks defenceman Chris Pronger.
He missed the last two games of the Finals against the Ducks, while Pronger was suspended for Game 4 for his actions.
“That’s two in a row in a very short period of time,” said Murray, who answered several questions from reporters wondering if McAmmond’s career was in jeopardy.
McAmmond, however, isn’t pessimistic about his future and stopped well short of saying his career could be finished.
“Everybody is saying I have a history of concussions, but I don’t have a problem with concussions,” he said, noting that he’s had only three concussions now in his career.
“I have a problem with people giving me traumatic blows to the head,” he said jokingly, drawing laugter from the assmebled media.
