Last night one of the refs in the Flyers/Rangers game suffered a broken jaw and 60 stitches to his nose and cheek. There was so much blood on the ice. It was pouring off of his face. He was against the boards and two players were coming up right behind him. He jumped up to get out of the way and one of the players jumped too, and his (the player's) skate blade rammed into the ref's face. Then three fights broke out...it was crazy.

Here it is on Youtube. Gotta love Youtube. You can hardly see any blood in this, which is good, because there was a lot of it.

Dear Lord. No, I will not watch it on YouTube. Glad to hear that both are (relatively) ok.

Hockey is the best sport to attend in person. At least, it's the sport that's most enhanced by being there live.

Trust me you don't want to watch YouTube of Zednik. It kind of turned my stomach live.

About the only thing that comes close was when goalie Clint Malarchuk caught a skate do the neck and almost died from loss of blood on the ice. He survived. Ironically, that incident also happened in Buffalo.

That's not ironic Doohickie

/Morissette filter

My son plays ice hockey and a skate or a stick handle to the neck is something I always worry about. It's the only really vulnerable part of the body that isn't covered by anything.

I was in the 300s directly in front of where he was hurt.

He's post surgery now, and should be OK. Here's to hoping he has the strength of Malarchuk, who was back on the ice less than a week after suffering a similar injury. It is comforting to know that someone like him will have a better chance of walking away from an injury like that simply because he's a young guy at the absolute peak of health.

No one in the arena knew what happened for a long time. You really couldn't tell unless you were right in the first few rows, and things happened so fast. I thought he must have broken his nose or something, since I didn't know what other injury could cause so much fucking blood and still allow someone to skate to the bench that quickly, or at all.

People were calling/texting friends watching on tv or listening to the radio just to see what was going on, since it was silent in the arena. All we knew was that he'd been hurt, it looked bad, and there was a lot of blood.
Everyone seemed very upset, some were crying, a few people near me left, and not just the ones with kids. They had the medics in the section next to mine, too, so I think someone there must have had a panic attack or become ill. What it looked like there was a lot worse than what was on TV. The trail of blood ran from the goal to the bench, and it took them a while to clean it. They brought out the shovel guys first, and then gave up after a bit of that and re-did the whole ice surface with the zamboni.

A couple of the Buffalo players were just kneeling on the ice during the break. I assume they were praying.

They eventually did make an announcement that he was stable and being transported to a hospital, which got a standing ovation from everyone in the arena. I think, by that point, everyone knew his throat had been cut, although no announcement was made. The ushers all seemed to know and were telling people who asked.

They should not have continued to play after, even if he was stable. They didn't even get all the blood off the ice. There were still splatters all over the endzone faceoff spot.

I'm a Buffalo fan to the core, but the win was hollow. No way could a single Florida player have their head in the game knowing one of their teammates was being operated on and could die. The stress was way too much, it got pretty violent at the end, lots of really unnecessary checking and at least one call for slashing.

Buffalo's players were out of it, too, and pretty much looked like they were just going through the motions hoping to keep the score as-is and wait out the clock. The crowd was pretty quiet during play, and the cheers at the final goal and the end were a lot more subdued than the usual (moreso when you realize how badly buffalo needs this win if they want to stay in the running for a playoff spot).

I think I heard at least ten people mention the word "cursed" as we filed out. Which doesn't seem all too unlikely given the luck of our hockey teams.

I wonder if this, combined with the other skate blade related injury earlier in the week (and what I'm sure will become endless replays of the old Malarchuk injury since the coincidence is beyond belief) will lead to a call for face/neck protection for all players, and not just the goalies.

Jesus, that's my worst hockey nightmare come true. (And no, I didn't watch the video. I have a pretty good imagination, thanks.) My thoughts go out to everyone involved.

Thanks for writing up that account, kellydamnit.

There's now a post about this over at the mothership, featuring a few YouTube links. Can't tell you whether it's the same thing iconomy linked, 'cause I'm sure as hell not watching any of them.

Nope, not the same thing. Mine was a ref getting faced with a skate. You can't see him getting faced - you see the view behind him, and also a very far away view. You do see a taken-from-behind-him shot of some blood dripping off of his nose, but nothing too major, and you can't see the gash at all.

I don't know about your tolerance level for gore, but mine is very low, believe me. I can't take it at all. None of the videos linked here or at metafilter show anything besides blood...blood on the ice, blood on a cloth, that kind of thing. The blood is abundant in the 1989 video linked at Metafilter....basically the goalie is lying there in a pretty damn large pool of his own blood. It's very disturbing to watch. But there's no gore, if that's the thing that bothers you, which is the thing that bothers me. I can distance myself from just blood, but if I see the cuts and the gashes I get to the point where I'm going to vomit. None of those clips have gore. But...there will be blood.

Oh, I really really *really* need to add here that I didn't watch any of the videos linked on Metafilter all the way through except the first one. The others, I watched about halfway through, and it was basically showing the same play over and over from different angles, so I stopped watching. There may have been some really gory close-ups after that that I didn't see. You probably aren't going to watch them anyway but if you do, proceed with caution.

I didn't watch the 89 video. But I saw it on tv in 89. They cut away after a few seconds. I read an interview with him, he said his main goal at that time was just to get out of the camera's range so his mom watching at home wouldn't have to see him die on TV.

Argh. That's horrible. I've been kind of tearing up over these videos today. The reason I'm kind of obsessed with this them because of my son. There's no first aid kit, no trainer, no doctor, nothing. I didn't know that when he first started playing - you just kind of assume a school-sanctioned team has to have someone there, legally, but you would be wrong. When one of the kids gets hurt, the two coaches gingerly walk over to them on the ice, and stare at them until they get up. Really. I don't know what they would do if someone was bleeding profusely.

I just had a talk with my son about the videos and he assured me that he'll squeeze and pinch any cut until he gets to the hospital.

Does Under Armor come in iron?

iconomy: if it helps, this sort of injury seems to happen only once every 20 years... and even then, it only seems to happen in Buffalo. ;)

I mean, given the number of NHL games and how many times this has happened (IIRC, there's been less than half a dozen fatal or near fatal injuries in the NHL, and many predate helmets, etc), the odds seem slightly more in favor of dying while walking through the parking lot or something.

Serious, severe hockey injuries of the life threatening/ life changing sort are rare. Which is small consolation to a worrying mom, but it's true.

It does help, actually. I'll keep reminding myself that I'm not in Buffalo tomorrow night ;)

If that doesn't help, this will... I had season tickets throughout most of junior and high school, so we're talking games at least once a week or more, and now as an adult I go to about half a dozen games a year.
This is the first game I've been to where I've seen someone get anything more serious than a broken bone.