The Ice Man who MELTED HEARTS
Crowds lay wreaths as ice hockey reacts to horror of Adam Johnson’s slashed throat
HE WAS making a new life in Nottingham, dropping out of training one day a week, by agreement with his coach, to make the 30-minute drive to Loughborough, where he was beginning a course at the university’s business school. He attracted a large crowd to a local John Lewis store when he arrived to sign replica shirts a few weeks back. He was modest. He had never expected that.
But for Adam Johnson, it really never got any better than a Saturday evening, four years ago when, having earned a shot at the big-time with a team in the US National Hockey League (NHL) — his sport’s top level — he arrived for an away match in his home state of Minnesota. He was playing in the colours of the Pittsburgh Penguins but there was an ovation from locals in that icehockey-mad city as he ran out for the ‘rookie lap’ — the right to skate alone around the perimeter of the rink, afforded to a debutant. And he actually scored.
To see Johnson’s reaction to the goal he fired home into the top of the net — ‘Top shelf, right where mama keeps the peanut butter,’ as the commentator called it — and to his team-mate Sydney Crosby handing him a fireman’s helmet as the man-of-the-match is a reminder of a humility and self-effacement rare in the sometimes brutal, alpha-male sport of ice hockey. ‘I’ve been hoping to play here for a while and it was a lot of fun to do so in front of friends and the family,’ said Johnson, or ‘Johnny’ as they knew him, his smile as wide as the nearby Mississippi.
It was the only goal he scored at hockey’s highest level. His shot at the NHL lasted 13 games, before he set out on a nomadic journey around Europe’s leagues — playing for clubs in Norway, Germany and, this summer, Nottingham. For some ex-NHL players that journey is a swansong, though not Johnson, someone who ‘sees the ice’, as they call the anticipation and peripheral vision of the exceptional few.
‘The younger players looked up to him,’ says Chris Ellis, one of the Panthers backroom team. ‘He wasn’t a captain but was so obviously a leader. He was a joy to work with.’
THE radiance and optimism Johnson brought has compounded the agony felt here since his life was abruptly ended before a crowd of 8,000 people last Saturday evening, when the blade of an opposing player, the Sheffield Steelers’ Matt Petgrave, connected with his neck.
The horror of the moment, including Johnson initially staggering to his feet before collapsing to the ice, has been compounded by the tenor of a debate about Petgrave’s culpability in the days which have followed, some of it racially motivated against one of the sport’s relatively few non-white players.
Some have viewed the grainy footage, shared millions of times, and extrapolated the view that Petgrave, whose left leg is raised above shoulder height, deliberately set out to injure. The 31-year-old Canadian’s poor disciplinary record hasn’t helped.
A more considered, and credible, view is that Petgrave may have thrown himself into Johnson’s path, embellishing his own collision with a skate which unbalanced him seconds beforehand, to intentionally impede the 29-year-old’s progress. Players are reluctant to suggest this publicly because even a reckless action such as that runs against the ethos of a sport in which having control of razor-sharp skates — which players typically grind to sharpen between each of a match’s three periods — is sacrosanct.
‘It looked like [Petgrave] intentionally tried to get his leg and body in the way [of Johnson],’ one vastly experienced former player tells the Mail on Sunday. ‘The position he [Petgrave] is in just does not look natural. It’s embedded in the ethos of the game that you don’t act recklessly. Of course, there is no way he is deliberately trying to put a skate there.’
Many feel Petgrave was simply unbalanced by ‘catching an edge’ of another player’s blade. But some refuse to see it that way. Britain’s leading authority on the culture of violence in ice hockey, Swansea University academic Dr Victoria Silverwood, is one of many to have been tagged into vile racist messages and gifs about Petgrave this week, offering the view that this was a deliberate attempt to injure.
The sport’s uber macho culture seems to attract this fringe, which has seized on the fact that Nottinghamshire Police have announced, as they must, they are investigating. ‘People seem confused by that and don’t understand how police investigations work,’ says Dr Silverwood. ‘But no player would intentionally inflict an injury like this.’
The tragedy has certainly forced the sport to examine a machismo that has left players reluctant to wear full neck protectors which, like full-face visors, are only compulsory until the age of 18. Wayne Gretzky, the world’s greatest player, wore neck protectors in the 1980s. But players claim they are uncomfortable in the heat of arenas, where the sport is played at such a pace that team members typically compete for 60 to 90 seconds before they are rotated.
Protective measures will be introduced now. The English Ice Hockey Association has said that it will make neck protectors compulsory from January. Individual clubs have purchased the equipment for players this week.
In Nottingham last night, the profound impact of the tragedy on those who had watched it unfold
was written across the faces of around 300 people who gathered in the rain to lay flowers and sign a book of condolence at the Nottingham Arena, where the Panthers play. A significant number had made the trip from Sheffield.
THE Sheffield contingent usually arrive for the sport’s most anticipated fixture in Britain, which is always played on Boxing Day. This time there was silence at the place where scarves, a floral ice hockey stick and a pair of boots have been placed among the sea of flowers. Many were too upset to speak. ‘I was in the arena last Saturday and it’s knocked me quite a bit,’ said Robert Downing, one of the Sheffield Steelers contingent. ‘I feel that being here might put things right in my head.’ He had witnessed blood on the rink in the minutes before screens were put in place. ‘I’m a first-aider,’ he related, describing several supporters fainting as the euphoria of Saturday’s match gave way to stunned silence. ‘My inner monologue keeps asking, could I have done something more to help?’
Inside the arena, the Adam Johnson memorial jersey was for sale, part of the fundraising campaign for the player’s family.
Ice hockey has ways of self-regulating to protect players against serious injury and ensure that codes of behaviour are adhered to, says Ryan O’Marra, a Canadian who finished his career with Coventry Blaze. ‘It’s a violent, respectful game,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘We are always at risk of injury and that’s what makes the skills so beautiful to watch. If something happens recklessly, retribution is meted out.’
The sport will not forget Adam Johnson. That debut goal of his for the Penguins featured on a film screened above a floral bouquet in the shape of his surname, as people filed into the rink here to sign condolence books, before two minutes’ silence were observed. The sequence concluded with a blackand-white image of Johnson staring into a camera lens — full of youthful optimism about a sport which was his life, and yet which took his life.