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The news that a professional hockey player - Toronto Maple Leafs forward Jason Blake - has cancer was bound to generate headlines, and doubly so when he vowed to continue playing the gruelling National Hockey League schedule while undergoing treatment.

Cancer "will not impact my ability to live my life as I otherwise would, and will not affect my ability to perform at my highest level for the Toronto Maple Leafs," he said in a statement.

That may sound like the boastful rhetoric of a tough guy, but Mr. Blake is fortunate (relatively speaking) to suffer from chronic myelogenous leukemia, a rare form of cancer that attacks the white blood cells.

The treatment for CML is a drug called imatinib mesylate (brand name Gleevec). Pharmaceutical companies have a tendency to hype their products as "miracle" drugs a little too often, but Gleevec is the real thing.

Most patients with CML (and another rare form of cancer called gastrointestinal stromal tumour) can be treated with a single pill a day. No chemotherapy. No radiation. No bone marrow transplant. And, except in rare cases, the side effects are minimal: occasional cramping, nausea and diarrhea.

While much attention has been paid to the fate of the 34-year-old star hockey player, too little attention has been paid to the real stars of this story - the researchers who made Mr. Blake's treatment possible.

Not far from the Air Canada Centre, home of the Maple Leafs, is the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital.

In the nondescript building on Toronto's hospital row, you will find one of the world's finest scientists: Tony Pawson is a microbiologist who has revolutionized the understanding of signal transduction - the way in which cells communicate.

CML is a classic example of cell miscommunication. An aberrant signal causes white cells to proliferate in an uncontrolled fashion.

The underlying problem is a genetic mutation: In CML, segments of chromosome 9 and 22 stick together. The result is a cancer gene that produces an abnormal protein not found in healthy cells.

Scientists have understood this sequence of events since the 1970s.

What they did not know - and what Dr. Pawson and his team discovered - is how the message to divide was transmitted within the cell. They identified a site on the proteins, dubbed SH2, where they join to form messengers.

In cancer cells, the signal is stuck in the "on" position. By turning off the signal, Dr. Pawson postulated, you could stop cancer in its tracks.

He was right, and that is precisely what scientists at the drug company Novartis did to create Gleevec.

The process of scientific discovery is somewhat more complicated than the rules of hockey, and considerably less entertaining. Like the Maple Leafs, scientists meet with failure more often than success.

But what is happening in Dr. Pawson's laboratory - and countless other labs around the country - is infinitely more important than what goes on in hockey arenas.

Yet Mr. Blake is paid $4-million a year. He is, for a large segment of the population, a household name. A role model and a hero, even.

Though he has forever changed the face of cancer treatment, Dr. Pawson gets paid considerably less. He has to scrounge around for grants to ensure he can keep his lab running. Beyond a fairly closed circle of scientists, he is unknown. Young boys and girls are not waiting outside his office for an autograph.

Hockey players are judged by their stats - goals and assists - and their trophies. Scientists are judged by their research - how many papers they publish and how often those papers are cited by others - and by their prizes.

Mr. Blake scored 40 goals last year, a noteworthy achievement in his sport.

Dr. Pawson, for his part, has been one of the most-cited researchers in the world for the past decade. The discovery that led to the development of Gleevec is just one in a long list of achievements.

Dr. Pawson has received the prestigious Wolf Prize in Medicine and the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the "baby Nobel."

The only major prize that has eluded him so far is the Nobel Prize for Medicine, and he is probably Canada's best hope in that domain.

So why is it that we care more about a hockey player with a frightening - but now manageable - disease than we do about a scientist whose work will change for the better the lives of so many?

It is a strange value system that results in sellouts every night at the Air Canada Centre and millions of viewers for games on TV while, at the same time, investment in scientific research is stagnating and even the über-gifted, such as Tony Pawson, toil in anonymity.

apicard@globeandmail.com