Hockey players jump right back on the horse

Boston Bruins’ Adam McQuaid Is A Hockey Player, Expected To Be Fine After Neck Sliced Open

There was never a doubt that defenseman Adam McQuaid would play Monday night against the Ottawa Senators.

Matt Dolloff, CBS Boston:

In just about any other professional sport, a sliced neck would mean at least a week off for most players. But hockey players don’t care about neck cuts – in some cases, they barely even notice.

That’s what happened to Bruins defenseman Adam McQuaid against the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night. Teammate David Backes’ leg shot upward during a battle along the boards, inadvertently hitting the trailing McQuaid directly and I mean directly in the side of the neck.

On March 22, 1989. Goaltender Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres had his neck sliced open from the skate of twenty-three-year-old rookie St. Louis Blues' right wing Steve Tuttle, who had charged the net, looking for a pass." One of our defensemen, Uwe Krupp, was right behind him. The pass came just above the crease -- a backdoor play. I slid across the net. Krupp pulled Tuttle down from behind and slid into me, skates first", said Malarchuk.

ESPN:

"When you get knocked off the horse, you get back on," I told the reporters. "It'll be tough to play, but I’ll have to be ready ... I’ll be psyched for it ... I'm anxious to get in there. I'll be happy to play. Something like this kind of opens your eyes. You have a life to live ... I'm lucky to be here."

There's not only one victim in this type of situation. Nobody gets out unaffected," Malarchuk said. "You cannot be directly involved in something like that and not be profoundly affected by it. You cannot see something like that and not be profoundly affected by it.

"I grew up around rodeo," Clint said. "You got bucked off the horse, the sooner you got back on, the better you were going to be. You can't be living with negatives all the time. You've got to get some positive flow back. I thought it was important to come back as quickly as I could."

Then he added with a laugh, "And I was also in the option year of my contract."

Toughest job in Sports? - Being the Team Doctor for a hockey team.


Paul Murphy

Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy