NHL reports only 55 players wearing neck guards despite no shortage of ‘close calls’

Frank Seravalli
Frank Seravalli(frank_seravalli)
Chicago Blackhawks left winger Tyler Bertuzzi
Credit: Oct 26, 2024; Dallas, Texas, USA; Chicago Blackhawks left wing Tyler Bertuzzi (59) in action during the game between the Dallas Stars and the Chicago Blackhawks at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

TORONTO — Every night in the NHL’s Situation Room, the game loggers – the heartbeat of the hockey operations staff – manually clip and color code hundreds of sequences from every contest. Purple is for officiating. Yellow is for penalties and missed calls. Blue is for coach’s challenges and video reviews.

And red is for injuries and Player Safety. Included among those clips are the dozens of close calls logged where NHL players narrowly avoid potentially devastating skate cut injuries.

“You wouldn’t believe how many there are,” NHL senior EVP of hockey operations Colin Campbell said. “We’re seeing it almost on a nightly basis. It’s really pretty scary.”

Yet, Campbell informed the league’s 32 General Managers on Tuesday at their annual November meeting that just 55 of the 708 skaters are wearing neck guards this season.

That only 7.7 percent of the league’s skaters have chosen to protect their necks seems like an incredibly low number considering we’re barely one year on from Adam Johnson’s tragic on-ice death while playing professionally for the Nottingham Panthers in Britain last October.

The league did at least report positive upticks in other cut-resistant protective equipment usage, including 100-plus players now wearing undergarments with cut-resistant material in the wrist area, and even more wearing similar protection in pants around their ankle and achilles areas.

The NHL has done everything on its part to encourage, educate and make more cut-resistant material available to players. There is information provided and posted in team locker rooms, along with data on the testing of these materials, which makes them league-approved.

It’s the NHL Players’ Association that has pushed back against mandating a league-wide equipment change on the basis of individual player choice and comfort.

GMs were encouraged on Monday to continue those conversations with players.

“Oh, we talk about it a lot,” said Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes, who previously worked as a player agent and understands the other side. “I can appreciate players having a choice. And I also have two boys that play hockey. They don’t exactly listen, but I wish they weren’t too proud to wear it for their own safety.”

In the year since Johnson’s unimaginable passing at age 29, other leagues and levels not bound by Collective Bargaining Agreements have taken the step to require neck guards. Just one week after it happened, the Canadian Hockey League – including the OHL, WHL and QMJHL major junior leagues – mandated neck guards. USA Hockey followed suit for all levels under age 18 as the national governing body of the sport. And then perhaps most importantly, the AHL required all players and on-ice officials to wear neck guards ahead of the 2024-25 season.

Campbell said the NHL’s hope is that players graduating to the league from the AHL will already be used to the protection and won’t see a need to take it off.

“Just like visors,” Campbell said. “And helmets before that.”

The AHL has long been a proving ground for the NHL. The AHL made visors mandatory for eye and facial protection purposes ahead of the 2006-07 season; the NHL followed in their next CBA agreement in 2013, allowing players who played more than 25 games under the old rule to be ‘grandfathered’ in and not wear visors if that was their preference. This season, some 12 years later, only four NHL skaters play without visors: Jamie Benn, Ryan O’Reilly, Zach Bogosian and Ryan Reaves.

In the meantime, the NHL is hoping more players will investigate or try the readily available cut-resistant protection and praying that the close calls the league is tracking don’t become anything more than that. It’s almost as if the NHL should ask players to watch a montage of all of the near misses before each season starts in one last plea to reconsider the risk relative to comfort. As for potentially mandating neck guards in the future, the next CBA negotiations are expected to begin in early 2025.

“We’ll add it to the list,” Campbell said.

Prepping for CBA Talks

Speaking of those impending CBA negotiations, the NHL began to canvas GMs on Tuesday for direction as they make preparations for meetings with the NHLPA.

The league is essentially putting it to the GMs to come up with a wish list, in priority order, of potential changes that they’d like to see to the game.

What’s on the table? According to multiple NHL GMs in the room on Tuesday, anything from further limiting contract term in length, the arbitration process, instituting a salary cap for the playoffs, reimagining LTIR usage, the post-trade deadline recall rule, or even the regular season schedule format.

Yes, there does seem to be an appetite for potentially limiting contract lengths, as a way of maybe even saving some GMs from themselves. But that isn’t universal, as some certainly enjoy spreading out the dollars over a longer length of time to lessen the cap hit.

Although, as some managers noted after the meeting, they appreciate that the commissioner’s office is taking their temperature and gathering feedback – they fully recognize that Gary Bettman and Bill Daly will ultimately determine what’s actually worth fighting for with the NHLPA.

Tampering Reminder

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly issued a reminder to all 32 GMs on Tuesday of the league’s tampering rules. Daly said it was a “refresher of what’s permissible and what’s not,” a general list of do’s and don’ts.

The genesis of the reminder was the slew of free agent contracts that were reportedly agreed to one minute after the clock struck noon on July 1 last summer, the first moment teams were even legally allowed to contact UFA players and their representatives. But Daly said that wasn’t the only thing.

One GM said the gist of Daly’s message was short and sweet: “Don’t be the one that gets busted.” If caught, Daly reminded, the penalty is a potentially substantial fine and/or the loss of draft pick(s).

GM Minutes

GMs were also reminded that interviews of prospects at the Draft Combine are to be kept cordial and professional, because apparently at least one team stepped over the line in pushing and grilling prospects … Perhaps the biggest topic of conversation was the recent NCAA rule change with respect to CHL player eligibility, which included a cross-section of information provided from Central Scouting head Dan Marr, as well as potential CBA ramifications from league executives. “Lots of discussion on that, and no real answers, and I don’t think anybody has an answer,” Campbell said … GMs were provided a June date for the league’s first-ever ‘decentralized’ Draft, which will be headquartered likely in Los Angeles with teams making selections from their own war rooms around the continent … There was continued discussion around the coach’s challenge and video review, with Campbell asking the question: “How perfect do we make the game?” That will be up for GMs to decide.

Quotable

“It’s gonna end pretty soon and we’re gonna get back in the old mode. [The complaints.] Why? Why’d you do this to us? We got screwed last night!”

— NHL senior EVP of hockey operations Colin Campbell on the aura surrounding him at the GM Meeting, one day after being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the builder category as part of the Class of 2024.

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