Kovacevic: On the Fleury freakout

For all the civic fuss this Tuesday afternoon over the health status of Marc-Andre Fleury, I thought I'd chime in to share this: He has not been cleared by doctors to play Game 1.

Fleury's current status, as relayed by the Penguins and, thus, their team doctors, is that his status is day-to-day. He's been cleared to practice, not to play.

There's no news being broken here. That's just how this stuff works. There are four levels of clearance in hockey: Resume skating, resume no-contact practicing, resume full practicing, resume playing. It's no different for concussions than any other injury and, in Fleury's case, he's obviously at Step 3 after a ramped-up participation Tuesday in Cranberry Township.



The reason I mention all this is that there seem to be all kinds of criticism and debate over anyone expressing concern about Fleury's status for Wednesday, with the most common accusation being that no one should 'play doctor' and the worst accusation being that expressing worry about Fleury is tantamount to denigrating the doctors at hand. I expressed such a worry myself in today's Tuesday Takes and was on the bad end of a bunch of those accusations myself.

Some of what I've read and heard has been laughable, but almost all of it is off the mark.

To be completely beyond-crystal clear: No one is denigrating the doctors for clearing Fleury to play for the simple reason that they have not yet actually done so.

If anything, the people at the head of the line in being worried about Fleury are the doctors themselves, or they'd already have cleared him. They haven't. Because they aren't sure.

We return you now to regular programming.