Crosby had been suffering from concussions throughout that season and had only been back playing for one month when he fought Giroux. Again, why would Crosby, arguably the world’s greatest hockey player, risk another concussion?

Perhaps the overriding logic is simply that fighting is an institutionalized part of the culture. While the hockey code might help to explain what a player was thinking when he entered into a fight, there is no evidence that it actually improves safety in the way that proponents of the code hypothesize. Our growing knowledge of concussions is rendering the code increasingly problematic.

It’s time for the NHL to question the continued implicit endorsement of a code that legitimizes honorable violence as a way for players to self-police each other. While the lawsuit against Bertuzzi and the Vancouver Canucks has been settled, it has only temporarily allowed the NHL to avoid having the hockey code put under a microscope.

Concussions are not going away and neither are the lawsuits.

As for Steve Moore, in 2013, he set up the Steve Moore Foundation with a mission to raise awareness on concussions in sports. In the spring of 2015, his foundation will host the First Annual SMF Concussion Conference in Toronto.

Garry C. Gray is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria and a Network Fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center of Ethics at Harvard.