Hockey has always been dangerous. But it can be safer

A death, a retirement and a suspension highlight the fact that a lot more can be done to keep players more secure in their workplace

It’s been a terrible and tragic couple of days for hockey and it’s been even worse for those who are charged with the task of keeping the on-ice workplace safe at the highest levels. There’s an old saying that suggests bad things happen in threes, but when they’re truly awful things they feel like a lot more than that.

It all started on the weekend when a 29-year-old former NHLer by the name of Adam Johnson died after having his carotid artery severed by an opponent’s skate in Britain’s Elite Ice Hockey League. It was a horrible tragedy, one that is unlikely to occur again in Britain’s top league, which immediately mandated neck protection for all players.

It continued Monday when a 19-year-old defenceman by the name of Lane Hinkley announced his retirement from the game after a lesion was found on his brain and doctors flagged him as a risk for early dementia and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. “Too many hits, too many punches, too many concussions that I didn’t properly heal from,” Hinkley said in his announcement.

Then it continued later that night when Boston Bruins defenceman Charlie McAvoy thought it would be a good idea to take a gratuitous shot at the head of Florida Panthers defenceman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, an action that earned McAvoy a ridiculously light four-game suspension from George (The Violent Gentleman) Parros and his gang at the NHL’s so-called Department of Player Safety. It also prompted a telling truth bomb from former NHL player Aaron Ward on social media. It should also be noted that Ward levelled the criticism despite the fact that he works for the league’s tracking and analytics provider.

It almost leads one to wonder whether a guy is safe playing at the highest levels of hockey. But it shouldn’t because the game is not safe, never really has been. Between the fact that it’s played at a high pace on four millimetres of sharp steel with no out of bounds and that it’s run by a league that actually loves the culture of violence that surrounds the game, there is always going to be an element of risk. But that doesn’t mean we don’t evolve and in each of these cases, there is a clear opportunity to do just that. Elite hockey will never be completely risk-free, but it can be better. Let’s look at each of the situations in that context:

The Johnson Death

When the skate of Matt Petgrave came up and struck Johnson’s neck, it was described as “a freak accident.” But the fact of the matter is that players suffering serious lacerations from skates are no longer freak accidents. Just ask Tucker Tynan, the goalie who had his femoral artery severed during a collision in an Ontario Hockey League game in 2019. Ask Clint Malarchuk, or Richard Zednik, or Erik Karlsson, or Cal Clutterbuck, or Ilya Mikheyev, or Evander Kane…

The fact is that the technology exists to mitigate the seriousness of these injuries. They aren’t terribly invasive and they don’t cost a ton of money. Players in both the OHL and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League are mandated to wear neck protection, but they quickly eschew it when they hit the pro ranks. Why? Because they’ll talk about hot rinks and discomfort, but it’s all about esthetics. In the aftermath of the Johnson death, a number of NHL players talked about considering adopting neck protection and several teams have ordered product for their players. While it’s difficult to tell on television, I didn’t notice any players who had actually taken the step of adopting cut-resistant equipment in the days following Johnson’s death. And this was while the tragedy was still fresh in everyone’s minds.

If there’s going to be change on this, it’s going to have to be mandated by the league. Bill Masterton of the Minnesota North Stars died after hitting his bare head on the ice during a game in 1968, but 20 years later there were still players skating in the NHL without helmets. Even in the wake of a terrible, but preventable tragedy, players are going to have to be forced to wear neck protection, the same way governments mandated the use of seat belts and child seats.

The Hinkley Retirement

Hinkley played three-plus years in the QMJHL, so it’s possible that some of the concussions he sustained came in minor hockey. But unless he had a side hustle as an amateur boxer, the fact that he mentioned “too many punches” suggests that he was probably concussed in some of his 14 fights in junior hockey. Of course, you run the risk of this happening when you have teenagers making poverty wages bareknuckle punching other teenagers making poverty wages for the enjoyment of adults.

But whether the concussions came in minor hockey or in major junior is inconsequential. The real question is: What the hell were the adults in the room thinking when this young man was coming back to play hockey before fully recovering from concussions? The dangers of the effects of repeat concussions are particularly enhanced with young people. It’s a travesty that Hinkley was sent out to play a contact sport before his brain was completely healed. Long gone are the days of sending a player back out or rushing him back to play after having his bell rung. If we can’t count on the leaders in this sport protecting the most vulnerable, we have a very, very large problem.

Let’s be better.

The McAvoy Suspension

Although it’s a little like comparing apples to oranges, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that Shane Pinto was suspended 41 games for allegedly allowing another person to access a third-party proxy betting account, but McAvoy gets 1/10^th that for targeting an opponent’s head. There are those out there who actually believe the four-game suspension McAvoy received was excessive.

And that’s a big part of the problem. The fact of the matter is that these hits are going to continue to happen in the NHL as long as players receive laughable sentences for delivering them. Four- and five-game suspensions are not insignificant, but nothing is going to change until players doing what McAvoy did receive 20-games. This was a headshot against a vulnerable player nowhere near the puck. But when you have a commissioner who still won’t admit that there is a link between repeated head trauma and CTE, which will undoubtedly put him on the wrong side of history, the league will never take this issue as seriously as it needs to be taken. Ward’s comments were telling. So were those of agent Allan Walsh, who said Ward’s words are something he hears, “on a daily basis from retired players.”

Hockey is a fast game with contact and sometimes bad things happen with no one to blame. This was not one of those cases. This was a player with a history of delivering headshots going after a player for no apparent reason and targeting his head. This could have been a tap-in for the NHL, but that would require its Department of Player Safety to, you know, actually be concerned with player safety.