Kevin Dupont

It doesn’t get much more frightening than what we saw Feb. 10 in Buffalo — Olli Jokinen’s skateblade slicing through teammate Richard Zednik’s carotid artery during the Panthers-Sabres game at HSBC Arena.

Fortunately, the expert medical team at Buffalo General Hospital needed only a couple of hours to sew the artery back together, later saying that it was almost totally severed. A complete severing would have made it a greater challenge for surgeons to repair it, or might have led to Zednik’s death.  

Zednik lost five units of blood in the gory accident, in which he had the presence of mind to cover the wound with a gloved hand and skate immediately to the Panthers bench, already woozy and beginning to buckle on his feet by the time he got there.    

“We’re all skating out there, basically, with two knives attached to our feet,” said veteran forward Glen Metropolit, one of Zednik’s linemates a few years ago in Washington. “You see that, man, it is scary stuff.”

The good news: soon after surgery, doctors proclaimed Zednik to be in stable condition, and said he showed no signs of brain damage — the latter often a concern in such surgery that requires the artery to be clamped as part of the process. In 6-8 weeks, or about the time this season’s playoff begin, the artery would should be completely healed, according to the doctors.  

All in all, a satisfactory, if not promising outcome for what could have been a tragic story. For those old enough to recall, it was reminiscent of the equally bloody gash sustained by then Buffalo goalie Clint Malarachuk almost 20 years earlier, also in Buffalo.

Now, could it have been prevented?

Many amateur hockey programs throughout the U.S. and Canada and many, if not most, European nations mandate neck protection for players, including forwards, defensemen and goalies. Not so in the National Hockey League, although at least 50 percent of NHL goalies wear some extra neck protection — in part because of what happened to Malarchuk that night at the old Buffalo Auditorium. Few, if any, NHL forwards or defensemen wear neck guards.

Amateur forwards and defensemen, once they reach a league that doesn’t make neck protection mandatory, or simply stop listening to their parents’ pleas, almost always discard the protective collars. The reasons vary, but typically players say they are too hot or give them a choking, claustrophobic feeling.

“I got rid of mine right away,” said Boston rookie Milan Lucic, recalling when he made the jump to top junior hockey in Canada. “Hated it.”

The NHL Players Association, now headed by former Boston attorney Paul Kelly, in the months ahead will poll its players on a number of safety issues, including eye protection and now, because of the Zednik injury, neck protection.

“We discussed visor use and other on-ice safety issues with each of the teams during the just- completed tour,” reports Kelly, who met with all 30 NHL teams individually in recent months.  “We intend to further discuss these important issues, with input from medical professionals, at our upcoming summer player meetings. The Association takes seriously its responsibility to educate players about on-ice safety issues.”

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As for the outcome, from past experience I don’t suspect there will be much hue and cry from the players to make visors or neck wear mandatory, and for similar reasons on both issues.

Too many players still feel uncomfortable when forced to play with any eye protection — be it a visor, full shield, or the so-called “birdcage” masks.  They feel the neck guards are too hot, or too confining, and despite the Zednik injury, they don’t feel the threat of potential mishap is high enough to merit wearing those collars game in and game out.  

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In other words, they’ll take their chances, be it the risk of losing an eye (something that nearly happened to Bryan Berard a few years ago), or having life literally drain from their body the way water trickles down a driveway from a garden hose.  Not  the choice I would make, or that I would allow my 10-year-old son to make. But dads get wise with age, I guess.

Players in Finland’s pro leagues must wear them, as well as some junior programs in the U.S. and Canada. It’s possible that one of these protective collars might not have prevented Jokinen’s blade from slicing through the side of Zednik’s neck, but no one knows that for sure.

This much we do know: had it not been for the immediate, expert medical help that the 32-year-old Zednik received, he would have died within minutes. This same accident in, say, a late-night beer league almost certainly would have been fatal.

If nothing else, the Zednik accident should serve as fair warning to all hockey players, no matter what age, to wear those neck guards when skating in places where such medical services aren’t available. Without immediate attention, a sliced or severed artery leads to death within minutes.

Zednik will live, and if he so chooses, he will play another day. But for a fraction of an inch of a skateblade, or, say, a nasty pileup that didn’t allow him to skate for help, the outcome could have been much different.