ANAHEIM DUCKS

AT PITTSBURGH PENGUINS

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2023 — 7:00PM EDT

PPG PAINTS ARENA, PITTSBURGH, PA

I’m getting to this one late, so it’ll be a relatively quick one. Tonight the Pittsburgh Penguins have a chance to merely save face at the end of this four-game homestand; a win against the Anaheim Ducks will give Pittsburgh a much-needed 2-2 split before they head out to California for a three-game road trip later this week. Prior to the season beginning the Ducks were not expected to be in contention for a playoff spot, but then again the Penguins probably weren’t expected to start off the season so poorly either. Such as it is, Anaheim is tied with Minnesota and Nashville with 8 points, good enough to be tied for eighth in the Western Conference, and with two big wins against Carolina and Boston to their credit which is more than we can say about Pittsburgh’s performance thus far. As we know, it is still pretty early in the season yet – some teams who are up in the standings maybe shouldn’t be, and for teams that are down, like Pittsburgh, the reverse – but the Penguins should not take the Ducks for granted tonight.

The hockey world is still reeling from the untimely and accidental death of former Penguin Adam Johnson on Saturday as his Nottingham Panthers visited the Sheffield Steelers in Sheffield, England. Johnson went undrafted from the University of Minnesota-Duluth but was picked up by the Penguins organization prior to the 2017-18 season. He spent much of his first three professional seasons in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, but he did play 13 games for Pittsburgh in 2018-19 and 2019-20, notching four points total in largely fourth line duty. The biggest night of his professional career was October 12, 2019, a 7-4 Penguins win over the Minnesota Wild. In the middle of a big second period for Pittsburgh, Johnson scored his first and only NHL goal, an absolute blast high and over a diving Devan Dubnyk, making the score 3-1. Less than two and a half minutes later, Johnson was Johnny-on-the-spot to feed Joseph Blandisi for Blandisi’s first goal as a Penguin. After that season, Johnson moved on to the Los Angeles Kings organization, playing a couple seasons for their AHL affiliate, the Ontario Reign, and then finishing up his North American career with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in 2022. Up until Saturday, Johnson was at a point-per-game pace for Nottingham.

Often it seems like the hockey world (and particularly the NHL) is less proactive and more reactive to matters of player health and safety. The most obvious observation of this is when a player is hurt by another player on the ice; the League has a Department of Player Safety that metes out fines and suspensions if they determine the injury violated the League’s rules. And yet many times the sport in general has lagged behind what many would consider to be sensible for the safety of players, generally when it comes to equipment. For a time goaltenders didn’t play with masks; no one played with helmets; skaters weren’t required to have visors and (on the professional level) are still not required to have shields; goaltenders didn’t need neck guards. Most of these things changed because players were getting hurt. Unfortunately for Adam Johnson, he wasn’t wearing a neck guard on Saturday and, for the first time that most of us are aware of, he died from an errant skate cutting his neck. Of course this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen, but hopefully it will be the last.