The conversation was a minute old and already Eric Lindros’ voice had risen an octave.

He was discussing the accepted safety standards for hockey helmets and his sport’s apparent reluctance to do more than the bare minimum when it comes to protecting brains.

“There seems to be enough talk,” Lindros almost hollered. “The feathers get fluffed, and then time passes. What has been accomplished? Honestly …”

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Lindros is upset hockey helmets have failed to move beyond splitting skulls, pretty much where the conversation began when manufacturing standards were created in 1973, to the point consumers are splitting hairs over which one offers the best concussion protection for them or their children.

“Helmets just haven’t progressed,” Lindros said. “It’s a frustrating sector of the game.”

Lindros’ exasperation shouldn’t be confused with surprise. Concussions not only beat down his own greatness but also snuffed his little brother’s career at its dawn. In the 1990s and early 2000s, ignorance was abundant about the long-term effects of repeated brain injuries.

Sixteen years after Lindros retired, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman still disputes widely accepted science that indicates repeated blows to the head beget chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that can cause depression, memory loss, emotional volatility and early dementia.

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No wonder hockey has lagged behind other sports in demanding its helmets provide protection more nuanced than a cranial fracture, a brain hemorrhage or death.

Researchers at Virginia Tech want to change that approach, and a company founded by Pat LaFontaine and pioneering neurologist Dr. James Kelly might prove the difference.

Valor is on the verge of launching the first hockey helmet to debut with a five-star rating from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, an independent group of researchers who rate helmets for concussion risk.

“They’re throwing a pebble in the lake,” Lindros said of LaFontaine and Kelly. “The ripples will go everywhere.”

Lindros has no stake in Valor, but as a passionate advocate for concussion care, he’s rooting for it to succeed.

LaFontaine’s career also was waylaid by brain injuries suffered on the ice. Six diagnosed concussions limited him to 865 games over 15 seasons. Lindros managed only 760 games. Among Hall of Famers, LaFontaine ranks 19th in points per game, while Lindros is 25th. Kelly treated them both.

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“As much as hockey has given to me,” LaFontaine said, “it’s taught me you can lose control really quick. I suffered through some very, very dark times.

“That’s why I’ve always been on a mission to go wherever Dr. Kelly went and to make the sport safer than I found it.”

LaFontaine and Kelly have explored building a better helmet for nearly two decades. Small successes interspersed with false starts eventually brought a hiatus. Their efforts rekindled upon seeing Virginia Tech’s troubling, initial hockey research in 2015 and 2016.

Frustrating them further was how well other sports fared in Virginia Tech’s testing. No hockey helmet exceeded two stars through the first two years of testing. The first four-star helmet finally emerged in 2017.

“That ignited us to do something,” Kelly said. “We thought, ‘If these helmets are that bad, we’ve got to be able to do better.'”

The standard certification for hockey helmets involves dropping them onto an anvil to see if they meet a catastrophic threshold. This is known as linear testing. Virginia Tech’s methods also apply rotational acceleration, a more real-world analysis of concussion risk.

Football excels in Virginia Tech’s lab, where in the latest evaluations 28 of 30 varsity helmets and 24 of 34 youth helmets received five stars, and none received fewer than three stars.

The hockey world, meantime, has been hesitant to accept Virginia Tech’s system. Two years ago, the school instituted a grading curve so hockey wouldn’t look so feeble compared to football while still rating hockey helmets among their own.

Even so, only eight of 63 hockey helmets this year earned five stars. Sixteen helmets received four stars, 13 received three stars, seven received two stars and 19 received one star. Virginia Tech’s scale shows a two-star helmet offers 150 percent worse concussion protection than a five-star.

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“We’re perplexed,” Virginia Tech Helmet Lab outreach director Barry Miller said. “We’re happy that Valor launched. We’ve been waiting a long time for someone to shake up the market.”

The industry is dominated by Bauer, CCM and Warrior Sports, companies with decades of research and development experience. CCM and Warrior did not respond to requests for interviews about helmet testing and the certification process. Bauer replied to ask who else was being interviewed for the story. Upon being told, Bauer ceased communication.

Valor Axiom will retail for $300 and has a one-piece shell, rare for hockey. The Messier Project’s M11 is another one-piece.

Valor Axiom rated sixth overall in Virginia Tech’s testing behind the CCM FL500 ($200), Bauer RE-AKT 200 ($300), Warrior Krown 360 ($80), Bauer RE-AKT 75 ($120) and Warrior Covert PX+ ($180) based on an overall evaluation score.

Top 10 rated helmets by Virginia Tech

From there, grades plummeted; 41 percent of the helmets warranted two stars or worse.

“The helmets we’ve been used to were all the same,” Lindros said. “And people just accepted the thought that a helmet could not have an impact on limiting concussions or rotational acceleration.

“That’s why they’re still selling the one-star and two-star stuff.”

To meet traditional certification for sale at your local sporting goods store, deadly incidents essentially are all hockey helmets aim to avoid— yet with no guarantees. That arrangement among manufacturers, leagues and buyers has been established for decades. It’s assumed players and parents know this.

Terminology about head injuries, however, has changed drastically, making matters murkier than a simple Hockey Equipment Certification Council sticker on each helmet.

In 1991, when Lindros was drafted with the potential to be history’s greatest power forward, the phrase “brain trauma” conjured catastrophes like funerals, comas, long roads toward partial recovery, wheelchairs and vegetative states. Aside from boxing, such scenarios were rare in sports.

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Lindros originally was treated for migraines before Kelly clued in the Philadelphia Flyers that concussions were plaguing their superstar center.

Concussion awareness has soared over the past decade. The NFL finally admitted the CTE link six years ago. The Boston University CTE Center has conducted provocative research across multiple sports and reported in 2022 that every additional year playing hockey can increase the chances of developing CTE by 23 percent.

So today, conversations about “brain trauma” in sports routinely refer to concussions and subconcussive blows, leading many consumers to believe — falsely — helmets are designed to reduce those injuries.

“Oftentimes, we find parents are the worst at buying helmets because they think their kids are just going to outgrow them,” said David Muskovitz, the longtime helmet designer working with Valor. “How many parents buy a bike helmet off the rack at Wal-Mart without any expert input? Or they’ll just go with a hand-me-down, which is a bad idea because helmets have a shelf life.

“Our hope is that parents will look at this helmet and say, ‘I need to protect my most valuable asset, my kid.'”

Muskovitz said hockey helmets come from “ancient technology and tradition.” The designer of helmet manufacturer Pret in Park City, Utah, guessed he has designed at least 100 models for skiing, biking, climbing and equestrian.

Some scientific and medical experts have hesitated to embrace Virginia Tech’s methods. Muskovitz even called them “convoluted” and said they warrant scrutiny. A common criticism is that a manufacturer could engineer a helmet specifically to rate five stars, but no one can say for sure if that would be a bad thing either.

The hockey world is wary, too, of football leaking into Virginia Tech’s testing.

Miller explained the only crossover is from 15 years of data that shows, through sensors inside football helmets, how increased linear and rotational impact increases the likelihood of a concussion diagnosis, regardless of whether it’s from a collision with a linebacker in cleats or a defenseman on skates.

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“We have two million data points,” Miller said. “That’s the only real-world data out there.”

Skeptics acknowledge Virginia Tech deserves praise for trying to advance helmet innovation in ways nobody else has pushed.

“I think there are better methods, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worthwhile,” said Blaine Hoshizaki, the University of Ottawa’s Neurotrauma Impact Science Laboratory director. “As scientists, we’re all trying to pull everyone to more sophisticated protocol.

“Are their methods more effective or more reflective of the risk associated with trauma? That’s a large debate.”

Unlike unwieldy regulatory and certification bodies, Virginia Tech has the luxury of autonomy to tweak its system here, and overhaul its approach there.

Hoshizaki advocates adding rotational acceleration tests, but there’s no sign helmets ever will face such criteria to meet Hockey Equipment Certification Council approval for use by USA Hockey and Hockey Canada.

In 2017, Hoshizaki authored an executive summary of research conducted for CSA Group, the Canadian standards organization that tests helmets for HECC. The paper concluded rotational acceleration research was “valuable” and the study’s results “highlight the need for examining helmet safety in terms of the impact characteristics of the events that create the risk for concussive brain injuries.”

Six years later, CSA Group has not adopted rotational acceleration as part of its certification process. The most recently updated standards from 2015 were reaffirmed in 2019.

A CSA Group spokesperson said its technical committee on ice hockey equipment and facilities and its subcommittee on ice hockey helmets are not scheduled to meet and, therefore, its members are confidential. The 2015 technical committee was comprised of 43 manufacturers, suppliers, doctors, scientists, leagues and regulatory bodies.

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The helmet subcommittee totaled 18 people, chaired by CCM research and development executive Evangelos Spyrou. Another R&D executive, vice chairman David Rudd, was among four members from Bauer. Warrior Sports had one delegate.

“All these interested parties sit on the committees and make it laborious to adopt standards,” said Hoshizaki, a member of the technical committee and former vice president at CCM and Bauer. “I know where the science is, and I want to guide them in that direction.

“A lot of other participants need to be there and want to understand the science and then craft it into a standard that would be appropriate for the product. I would like it to go faster, but I’m one person.”

There’s inaction despite Competition Bureau Canada, a fair-practices watchdog, fining Bauer in 2014 and Reebok-CCM in 2017 over advertising and marketing that gave consumers the impression their helmets prevented concussions. On the Bauer case, Competition Bureau Canada ruled “the testing was not adequate and proper to support the marketing claims.”

No helmet can totally eradicate concussions. A consensus of safety experts insists helmets should be only one part of the equation when addressing head injuries. They harp on organizational vigilance, better coaching, stricter officiating and no hitting until their bodies are more mature. Fighting is another topic.

There are concerns that promoting helmets for concussion safety could provide a false sense of security. Players might get more reckless and referees more lenient.

Legal hockey plays cause concussions too. Players accidentally fall to the ice, smash into the boards or the glass or the goal post, take a clean shoulder to the sternum. All can cause abrupt, rotational torque to the brain.

“I think the Virginia Tech lab is wonderful,” said Dr. Michael J. Stuart, USA Hockey chief medical officer and father of three former NHLers. “They do a very nice job with their testing conditions, but there are a lot of different considerations.

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“One of the most worrisome mechanisms of traumatic brain injury in ice hockey is an unanticipated, open-ice hit, possibly to the body, the face, the jaw. A helmet doesn’t matter in that situation. Forces transmitted through the neck, to the head and consequently to the brain would not necessarily be mitigated at all to wearing a helmet.”

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association have a joint equipment subcommittee for their helmets and goalie masks. ARCCA’s biomechanical engineering group since 2011 has handled their certification, relying on standardized linear and puck-impact tests to be cleared for use.

Players, however, often consider how helmets feel or simply look on their heads, Hoshizaki said. He laughed at a memory from his days with Bauer, when the research team flew to Philadelphia to show Lindros a new model. They had a presentation prepared to explain the latest engineering and design.

“The first thing he did when we showed it to him, he put it on and walked into the changing room, where there was a mirror,” Hoshizaki said. “He looked at himself and said, ‘I’ll wear it.'”

Yes, Lindros said, it happened. He isn’t proud that’s how he used to think in the relative stone age of NHL concussion awareness.

When he retired, Lindros donated $5 million to the London Health Sciences Foundation at the University of Western Ontario, now home to the Lindros Legacy Research Building. He campaigned for Rowan’s Law, mandating concussion recognition and protocols for Ontario amateur sports, and continues to push for national passage.

“Guys like Eric Lindros and Paul Kariya and I, we lived it,” said LaFontaine, a tireless philanthropist through his Companions in Courage Foundation for hospitalized children. “We know the repercussions and residual effects from hitting your head hard enough and often enough. We know the damage, and the sad thing is some guys don’t come back.

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“We owe it to the game to learn from this.”

Wearers have as much a role as the manufacturers. As much as scientists and engineers can innovate, players — and, in many cases, their parents — must educate themselves and demand more with their buying power.

Atlantic Amateur Hockey Association president Glenn Hefferan marvels at what he sees from athletes, coaches and officials within his organization of 35,000 registered players in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

“Helmets aren’t cheap, but they’re worth every penny to protect your head,” said Hefferan, a Valor fan who has been on USA Hockey’s board of directors and served on its committees for nearly 30 years. “Isn’t it silly to be reluctant, when you consider the way people commit so much money to skates and sticks?”

Kelly bemoans how hockey used to be considered progressive when it came to concussions, that somehow the sport slipped to the back of the pack. He helped create baseline testing that the NHL adopted in 1997, a development directly related to LaFontaine’s controversial decision to return from a fifth concussion. The Buffalo Sabres refused to let LaFontaine play for them again and traded him to the New York Rangers. A collision with teammate Mike Keane concussed LaFontaine a sixth time and sent him into retirement.

Since then, since Mike Richter, since Keith Primeau, since Lindros, since Marc Savard and Tim Connolly and Sidney Crosby, hockey helmets don’t seem willing to keep up with the precautions other sports have taken.

“There’s almost no research that says, ‘Yeah, concussions are not so bad anymore,'” Hoshizaki said. “The more research we do and techniques we come up with, the more concern scientists have.

“The more research we do with white matter and cerebral spinal fluid trauma and really associating these changes to neurons, the scarier it becomes about depression, decreased executive function, cognitive challenges and emotional changes that kids already kind of struggle with. We’ve made very little progress.”

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LaFontaine, Kelly and Muskovitz individually stressed Valor’s mission is not to be adversarial in the marketplace. LaFontaine added his hope is to find ways to create a helmet that helps keep kids from leaving hockey. Muskovitz said his interest included covering the ground football has.

Kelly insisted the “intent wasn’t to be disruptive,” though he conceded it might be healthy for the industry, maybe get things to a point buyers are splitting hairs over which concussion-mitigating helmet to buy.

So far, Valor has found the landscape rather open.

“It was easy for our helmet to meet the current standards because they don’t address the true, visionary needs of the sport,” Muskovitz said. “They don’t push forward. How or when are they going to change? We don’t know, but we’re not waiting.”

(Top photo: Brett Carlsen / Getty Images)