Neck Protection - Your Life May Depend On It

When Florida Panthers' forward Richard Zednik skated toward his team's bench gasping for life, his carotid artery severed and leaving a ghastly trail of blood in his wake, the hockey world was suddenly transported back to the year 1989.

It was on March 22nd of that year when one of the most disturbing scenes in American sporting history occurred. I will warn you of the disturbing nature of the video that forever changed goaltender Clint Malarchuk's life. The ice skate of an opposing player accidentally sliced across Malarchuk's neck, piercing open his jugular vein in front of more than 15,000 spectators and witnessed live on television.

Malarchuk was immediately rescued off the ice and sped to the hospital, where he would receive over 300 stitches to seal the wound. The aftermath of the incident, which caused two spectators to suffer heart attacks and left players vomiting on the ice from the sight, raised new concerns about neck protection for goaltenders. Fortunately, like Zednik, Malarchuk survived.

As a 10 year old hockey goalie, I was very personally affected by this incident. I was actually in Buffalo, the city Malarchuk played in at the time of the injury, for a hockey tournament about a week after the incident. I went to the hotel restaurant with my dad, and who did we see sitting there eating breakfast with his wife? Clint Malarchuk, complete with a huge gauze pad wrapped around his neck.

From that day on, I wore a protective neck collar along with a flap that hung down from my facemask and covered my throat. I was not the only goaltender to add such protection.

Here we are, some 19 years later, and the debate has refueled. In many youth hockey leagues, no neck protection is required and only goaltenders are even recommended to wear it (surely a result of the earlier Malarchuk incident.) But now that a skater, not a goaltender, has fallen victim to this gruesome injury, will we see the protection become mandated for all hockey players, at least on the youth level?

Probably not.

Hockey is a sport whose goaltenders didn't even wear masks as recently as 1974. Players were not required to wear helmets until the 1990s, and many wear no face protection whatsoever to this day. There have been serious eye injuries, skates slicing apart faces, thousands of broken noses and lost teeth, and yet no protection is required.

But as painful and disfiguring as these injuries can be, perhaps there is nothing more frightening than watching a neck spurt pints and pints of blood. One time can be referred to as just that: "a one time occurrence." But seeing it happen again is a trend in the wrong direction.