Despite frequent close calls, NHL reports just 55 players currently wearing protective neck guards.
Each night in the NHL’s Situation Room, the game loggers – the core of the hockey operations team—handpick and color-code hundreds of sequences from each game. Purple is for conducting ceremonies. Yellow signifies penalties and overlooked calls. Blue represents the coach’s challenges and video assessments.
Red represents injuries and player safety. Among those clips are numerous near misses recorded where NHL players nearly escape serious skate-cut injuries.
“You wouldn’t believe how many there are, We’re seeing it almost on a nightly basis. It’s really pretty scary.” : NHL senior EVP of hockey operations Colin Campbell said.
However, Campbell told the league’s 32 General Managers during their annual November meeting on Tuesday that only 55 out of 708 skaters are using neck guards this season.
The fact that only 7.7 percent of the league’s skaters have opted to safeguard their necks appears to be an astonishingly low figure, especially since it’s been nearly a year since Adam Johnson’s unfortunate on-ice death while playing for the Nottingham Panthers in Britain last October.
The league has at least noted increases in the usage of other protective gear that is cut-resistant, with over 100 players now donning undergarments made of cut-resistant fabric in the wrist area, and an even larger number utilizing similar protection in pants around the ankle and Achilles areas.
The NHL has taken all necessary steps to promote, inform, and provide players with more cut-resistant materials. Information is available and displayed in team locker rooms, along with details about the testing of these materials, which renders them approved by the league.
The NHL Players’ Association is the one that has resisted imposing a league-wide equipment alteration, citing individual player preference and comfort.
In the year following Johnson’s shocking death at 29, various leagues and levels not restricted by Collective Bargaining Agreements have begun to mandate neckguards. Only a week after the event, the Canadian Hockey League – which comprises the OHL, WHL, and QMJHL major junior leagues – required neck guards.
“Just like visors, And helmets before that.” : Campbell said.
USA Hockey took similar actions for all age groups under 18, acting as the national governing body of the sport. Moreover, and possibly most crucially, the AHL mandated that all players and on-ice officials don neck guards prior to the 2024-25 season.
Campbell mentioned that the NHL anticipates players moving up from the AHL will already be accustomed to the protection and won’t feel the necessity to remove it.
The AHL has historically served as a testing ground for the NHL. The AHL required visors for eye and facial safety before the 2006-07 season; the NHL implemented a similar rule in their subsequent CBA in 2013, permitting players who had participated in over 25 games under the previous regulation to be ‘grandfathered’ in and opt not to wear visors if they chose.
This season, about 12 years later, just four NHL players compete without visors: Jamie Benn, Ryan O’Reilly, Zach Bogosian, and Ryan Reaves.
Meanwhile, the NHL is wishing that additional players will explore or utilize the easily accessible cut-resistant gear and is hoping that the near misses the league is monitoring remain just that.
It seems the NHL ought to have players view a compilation of all the near misses before every season begins as a final attempt to reassess the risk in comparison to comfort. Regarding the possibility of requiring neck guards in the future, the upcoming CBA negotiations are anticipated to start in early 2025.
Image Credit: John Jones-Imagn Images
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