I've definitely gotten my bell rung one too many times from playing hockey. I've had 4 reported ones and the doctors told me to stop completely after the 4th. The scans didn't look too good.
It was definitely tough to deal with because I had to deal with the symptoms and not play all at once.
Where I'm from (Malaysia) hockey is irrelevant. It's a small community and we have a national team and club teams that have hockey players playing the game for over 2 decades now. It's a growing sport here and the levels have definitely improved.
Concussions are not really something they pay attention to so much back in the day. But coaches and the federation are starting to realize the issue too. We've also started implementing the series of tests before returning to play but the whole process is not as advanced as other hockey nations just yet.
I've watched Concussion and it was definitely an eye-opener. I would also recommend watching Ice Guardians. A complete opposite perspective from professional hockey players about why the NHL have yet to budge.
Its much more than just the NHL. It's routed so deep in the nature of the game that players hired to be team enforcers feel that if fights were to be illegal, the enforcers would be out of a job.
Then again it all comes back to awareness, fitness and policies to help curb this problem. @adsactly this was a great read. Thank you for putting this out.
The history of the game and preserving tradition is a major hurdle in creating changes to make things safer in many sports including the NHL. There is also this perception about being "tough" and until that changes we are going to continue seeing the same issues.