Tom Fitzgerald makes impassioned case to NHL GMs for cut-resistant equipment after son’s close call

Warning: This story contains a graphic photo of a skate-cut wound.

MANALAPAN, Fla. — Tom Fitzgerald and his wife, Kerry, were sitting in the bar of a Legal Sea Foods in New Jersey eating dinner on Dec. 28. As he has done countless times over the years, the New Jersey Devils president of hockey operations and general manager pulled out his phone so the couple could watch their son Casey, the captain of the AHL Hartford Wolf Pack, play the Providence Bruins.

In the second period, the former Boston College, Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers defenseman went into the corner for an innocuous-looking puck battle. But when Casey delivered the check, the skate of the Providence player shot back and clipped Casey up high.

Since it was the second period, it was the long change, so Casey continued to play. But he kept grabbing at the upper part of his neck. Fitzgerald thought his son may have gotten hit in the teeth.

“He stayed on the ice for another probably 12, 15 seconds and the puck got out and he actually asked the ref, ‘Am I cut?’” Fitzgerald recounted.

The ref was on the other side of Casey, so he didn’t see the cut and told him no.

But as Casey skated to the bench, a Providence player frantically yelled to him, “Dude, your f—ing neck is cut.”

The Hartford trainers hustled Casey into the medical room, got the bleeding under control and rushed him to the hospital, where a team of a dozen doctors and nurses waited.

“My wife was a mess,” Fitzgerald said, choking up. “I was cautiously optimistic because he stayed on the ice.”

Fitzgerald and his wife were getting updates from Casey’s girlfriend, but they had also taught their four boys to let them know right away if anything ever happened on the ice, so they got an early call from Casey too.

“He called us from the ambulance on the way to the hospital, saying, ‘I’m OK. I’m gonna be OK,’” Fitzgerald said, his voice cracking. “We kind of broke down there.”

On Tuesday morning, 20 minutes north of where Casey Fitzgerald was born in Boca Raton in 1997 while his dad was playing for the Florida Panthers, NHL vice president of hockey operations Rod Pasma updated the league’s 32 general managers on dozens of cut-resistant options that are available to players. He then showed the execs a dozen video clips of near-misses or cuts sustained by players this season.

The last one was Casey, followed by two gruesome photos — one “before” picture of the open wound just below his jaw and one “after” picture of the 25 stitches needed to close the wound.

Pasma then turned the floor over to Fitzgerald, who asked his colleagues to use Casey’s incident as an example when imploring their players to wear cut-resistant material over their necks, wrists and ankles.

“I don’t wish that on any parent,” Fitzgerald said. “My message was just, ‘Tell the players you don’t want your parents potentially going through something like this’ — how scary it is. Put as much protection on as you possibly can because you’re going to stop playing at some point, and you’re going to have to live the rest of your life … so live it.’”

Fitzgerald is the one general manager on the joint NHL/NHLPA Protective Equipment Subcommittee, along with NHL executives, trainers, equipment managers and NHLPA members. So this was already a subject near and dear to his heart.

When Kevlar socks first came out and Fitzgerald was reading about Achilles tendon and lace-bite cuts while working for the Pittsburgh Penguins, he’d take the socks home for his boys, “and if they didn’t wear them, they didn’t play.”

After Hibbing, Minn., native Adam Johnson’s death on Oct. 28, 2023, while playing professionally in England, several leagues around the world mandated neck guards. Neck guards are now mandated by USA Hockey, all major junior leagues in North America, the ECHL and the AHL. So Casey Fitzgerald, now 28, was wearing one during that December game in Hartford.

The skate caught him just above it.

“The first thing I thought about was a chin guard,” Fitzgerald said. “If you can mandate to at least have the two-finger rule, would a Kevlar chin guard have stopped some of it? I don’t know if it would’ve prevented all of it, but just ideas like that, and there’s a prototype being made as we speak. Actually it was supposed to be ready by the 4 Nations.”

The NHL’s position is that all NHL players should wear neck protection. But it cannot be mandated unless agreed upon by the NHLPA.

For the NHLPA, the issue boils down to protecting the rights of players to make individual equipment choices while also gaining a better understanding of what options are available.

“The joint NHL/NHLPA Protective Equipment Subcommittee provides education to players and teams regarding cut-resistant equipment that is available to all players,” the union said in a statement. “The NHLPA’s emphasis is on making sure players have the necessary information to make informed choices about their equipment. Our membership continues to feel strongly that wearing cut-resistant equipment is a matter of individual preference.”

The number of NHL players wearing cut-resistant gear is on the rise — between 55 and 60 players this season, according to Pasma.

As for mandates such as the ECHL and AHL’s being grandfathered in at the NHL, the prevailing industry view is that it’s more a question of “when” than “if.”

The NHL has previously introduced mandates for helmets (1979), visors (2013) and helmets during warmups (2022) with grandfathering provisions. It could do the same for cut-resistant protection as part of ongoing CBA talks, which would mean introducing a mandate as soon as the 2025-26 season.

“I remember when we put netting behind the net,” Dallas Stars GM Jim Nill said. “Remember the fight to do that?”

“I can’t believe we went that long without netting,” St. Louis Blues GM Doug Armstrong said. “I can’t believe when I started out my wife and kids would sit in the corner 25 rows up and they didn’t get (hit). It’s just crazy. Safety should be paramount.”

GMs believe mandated protection to exposed and vulnerable areas is coming.

“Players are creatures of habit, and they want to feel good,” Nill said. “They’re so competitive, they want to feel right. But I think eventually we’re going to get to the point where they start to realize what’s going on. And I think we have to help guide them there. I think the PA has to do their part and help push them, too.”

One of the nearly five dozen NHLers to wear a neck guard is the Boston Bruins’ Jakub Lauko. On Oct. 24, 2023, in a game at Chicago, Lauko was sliced open by a skate near his left eye. Leaving the ice, Lauko thought he actually lost his eye. When he returned to the lineup Nov. 11, he put on neck protection.

“Adam (Johnson’s) incident happened four days after my accident, so it was one of the big reasons why I put one on,” Lauko said. “I don’t even notice it anymore. It’s just part of my equipment now.”

In the 2023-24 season, 78 percent of NHLers in The Athletic player poll, though, said they were opposed to neck guards being mandated. Lauko doesn’t understand how Johnson’s tragedy didn’t cause NHLers to put on neck guards.

“Players think they’re uncomfortable,” he told The Athletic earlier this season, “but it took me like two or three practices to get used to it. I think the risk is much, much bigger than it’s uncomfortable. If you can get through two or three practices, then you have another layer of protection on the most vulnerable spot on your body, which has already proven it can be fatal.”

What really bothers some general managers is the number of AHL players who wear neck guards in the minors but take it off when they’re recalled to the NHL.

“I told the PA to their face, actually, because we were all together in Montreal (during the 4 Nations), ‘I don’t care what you say. They come up, they’re gonna keep it on,’” said Fitzgerald, who was one of Team USA’s assistant GMs. “I haven’t really enforced it yet, but I think it’s important that we just have continuity.”

Added Nashville Predators GM Barry Trotz, “I know in Nashville through our development camp, through our Milwaukee affiliation, we really push and demand that from players in the minors. Change comes from the younger group of players, and they get used to it and they understand it and they see it, and it’s just an education process. We’ll continue that. I just think safety’s a priority. Our game’s fast, it’s dangerous and you want to keep the players and the athletes playing hockey.”

“I know when I played, I wanted to wear what I wanted to wear,” said San Jose Sharks GM Mike Grier. “That’s the hard part. We have to encourage our players to protect themselves. I think our organization has been making sure our guys in the American League have the socks and wrist protection. And hopefully those guys will eventually graduate to the NHL and they’ll just keep wearing it.

“But as far as our NHL guys, we make suggestions to them in training camp for what to wear, but that’s as far as it goes. It’s still going to be up to them to make the decision about what they want to wear.”

Fitzgerald hopes NHL players think about their parents so “God forbid” they’re not in the same position one day as Johnson’s parents.

“We’re very lucky,” Fitzgerald said referring to the incident with his son. “(I don’t understand) why the players don’t think big picture. … If they ever thought of their parents watching what we watched, maybe they’d think differently.”

Added Armstrong, “There’s so many near-misses, and you don’t want to be part of a tragedy — you don’t want to be part of the 1 percent or .01 percent, because potentially you don’t come back from .01 percent.”

Fitzgerald said after his son’s wound was repaired and everything calmed down, Casey lay in that hospital bed and the reality of what had just occurred hit him.

He broke down as he thought about the “wow and the what-ifs,” Fitzgerald said.

A few days later, Casey was back on the ice practicing with the Wolf Pack. He missed just two games and was back in Hartford’s lineup in just eight days.

Fitzgerald is passionate about educating players about cut-resistant protection, but he hasn’t been able to convince a single Devils player to wear a neck guard. The game before the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Devils’ Luke Hughes had a close call with a skate.

He was rattled.

Hughes had known about what happened to Casey — had seen the pictures. But Casey’s incident didn’t trigger him to wear a neck guard, and even though he tried a neck guard after his scare, Hughes no longer wears one, Fitzgerald said.

“It’s hard,” said Fitzgerald, who played more than 1,100 NHL regular-season and playoff games. “I sound like a hypocrite. I didn’t wear a half-shield. They were an option. And I tried. I didn’t like it. And it felt like wearing glasses. But if it was mandated, and the more I wore it, the more you get used to it.

“I just don’t understand how they can expose their … they wear these 13-inch gloves and with exposure (on their wrists), I don’t get it personally. Players are stubborn. I understand it. I was one myself, and I was as stubborn as they can be. It’s about my career today. But if something like this could help think big picture versus the today, think about tomorrow.”

(Top photos of Tom Fitzgerald and Casey Fitzgerald: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images and Bob DeChiara / USA Today)