Decades after he nearly died, hockey player asks why neck guards still aren't mandatory

The hockey sweater from that night still hangs on the wall of Kim Crouch's basement rec room. So expertly repaired, and cleaned, that you have to look twice to see the jagged line where emergency workers cut it off his blood-soaked torso.

The long, hooked scar on the right side of his neck has faded too. But not the memories. 

It was Jan. 5, 1975. Crouch, then 18, was in net for the Junior A Markham Waxers, playing against the Royal York Royals at a rink in North Toronto. As he recalls it, the play was routine. The outcome was not.

"There was a puck entering into our zone. And as a goalie, I raced out, slid on my left side, and as I did, two players jumped over me and one of their skates caught me on the side of the neck," said Crouch. 

Black and white images, captured by a local newspaper photographer, show the players suspended in air moments before impact. Then a dazed Crouch, sitting in a spreading pool of his own blood, with the man who saved his life, team trainer Joe Piccininni, desperately working to staunch the flow. 

Almost five decades later, Crouch recalls that the emergency surgery lasted three hours, but can't remember how many stitches it took to sew him back up. A case review saved in his scrapbook, details the devastating injuries — extensive muscle and nerve damage, a nick to a vertebrae, the carotid artery completely severed and the jugular vein mostly cut through. 

"As you get older, you begin to realize how fortunate you were," said Crouch, now 67. "I was a pretty lucky guy."

A narrow escape, made all the more noteworthy by what came next. 

Crouch returned to the ice within a month, wearing what may well have been the first hockey neck guard, designed by his father Ed — then the Whitby, Ont., fire chief — and stitched together by a local seamstress. 

While the safety gear got attention and became commercially available, mandatory neck guards still aren't the norm in professional or adult league hockey.

After the latest skate-blade tragedy, the death of Adam Johnson, 29, during a pro game in the U.K in October, that may be changing.

When Ed Crouch debuted his neck guard, A Toronto Star story from the time noted that four young hockey players had already died from neck injuries.

The phone at the Crouch household began to ring with worried parents looking for protective wear for their own kids. "Kim Crouch Collars" became a family business. Kim eventually took it over from his dad. It endured until 2021, when he decided to retire.

The basic design — soon copied by other equipment makers — never changed. Cut-resistant ballistic nylon over foam with a velcro fastener at the back. Lightweight, inexpensive, and effective. Which makes the hockey world's reluctance to fully embrace them all the more frustrating for Crouch.