How Maple Leafs staff helped save a rec-leaguer from a skate cut in the throat: 'I thought I was going to die'

It was in the Toronto Maple Leafs locker room that Ike Werner first allowed himself to believe he would survive.

After his throat was accidentally slit by a skate blade during a Sunday afternoon game at the NHL team's practice facility earlier this month, a terrifying experience became surreal when the 37-year-old looked over and saw Maple Leafs forward Nick Robertson receiving treatment . in an adjacent room.

“That was my image,” Werner said The Athletics. “He's a work in progress.”

Werner had noticed the luxury cars behind the closed section of the parking lot as he drove into the Ford Performance Center that afternoon. The Zamboni also hit the ice earlier than normal, so he figured the Leafs had skated at Rink 2 before his “Prestige Worldwide” team faced the “Jagrbombs” in the True North Hockey League.

That fact became much more important to him when he suffered a gruesome cut during his third shift of the game and screamed for help, only to end up under the care of Leafs athletic therapists Paul Ayotte and Neill Davidson.

“They were so good,” Werner said. “They were so calm and that helped ground me a little bit, if you will, because I was spiraling.”

It's not a place a rec-leaguer could reasonably imagine being in — even after the October death of former NHLer Adam Johnson while playing professionally in England.

This tragedy shed light on the need for more cut-resistant equipment in the sport and has led to players at all levels starting to wear it. Werner recalled the topic discussed among his men's competition team in the fall and said he had even tried to purchase a neck protector at the time without success.

As one of the older players in a moderately competitive league, he was more careful than most when it came to his equipment. He wore wrist guards and cut-resistant socks and, after previously wearing a visor (pictured at top), recently moved to a full face shield.

“When Adam Johnson died, you couldn't buy neck guards,” Werner said. “I tried. That was a few months ago, and I probably could have continued with it, but I didn't.

“One of the things I said to my wife was, 'It's rec league. It's not that fast. The equipment is not at that level. The skates are not that sharp. That's not going to happen in rec league.”

Except when that happened.

NHL player survey: Why 78 percent say there should be no neck guard mandate ⤵️

— The Athletic NHL (@TheAthleticNHL) February 2, 2024

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Werner has no memory of what happened. None of his teammates were sure immediately afterwards.

It wasn't until Werner's league president sent a clip from a 360-degree camera installed in the arena on Tuesday night that anyone got a clear picture of what happened.

The piece looked as innocent as can be. Werner stood in the slot in front of his own goal and poked at a loose puck when an opponent came at it, throwing him off balance. As the opponent fell to the ice, his right skate kicked up and struck Werner under the face mask.

Incredibly, the force of the impact did not knock Werner over, even though it left him with significant bruising to his chest and neck, which persisted for a week after the February 4 incident. An incision was also opened that required twelve stitches to close.

The video clip confirmed the only aspect of the sequence that Werner clearly remembered: he picked up his fallen stick after the collision and skated to the bench under his own power.

What also stood out in his memory was how little pain he felt in the immediate aftermath of the play and how little blood there seemed to be. He says it felt like a minor scrape or jersey burn. Except when he returned to the bench, a referee told him to leave the field of play immediately.

Old teammate Jack McVeigh accompanied Werner to the dressing room after briefly seeing what his pal was dealing with.

“It was quite shocking that he was still alive when you saw the injury,” McVeigh said. “He took his hand off his neck and you said, 'Oooooh. Holy f—.”

“I don't even know what was going through my mind other than 'You have to deal with that.'”

Werner only lost his cool once he caught a glimpse of the cut in a mirror once back in the dressing room. According to McVeigh, he immediately turned white.

There was a brief discussion about calling an ambulance and reaching the arena lobby until Werner remembered the Leafs were in the building. He caught the attention of cameraman Armando Cavalheiro, who works as a cameraman for Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and was standing nearby after covering the training. Cavalheiro started banging on a back door of the locker room until it opened and Werner was let in.

He was immediately attended to by Davidson and Ayotte, the Leafs' medical staff, who applied pressure to the neck area and examined the injury. They eventually closed it off with Steri Strips and bandaged Warner after determining he needed to go to the hospital for further testing before stitches were placed.

Just as importantly, they provided reassurance that everything would be okay.

“They were so good,” Werner said. “Ask me a few questions: 'Can you breathe well?' 'Can you swallow well?' Like that kind of thing to rule out serious, serious things.

“They say, 'You're lucky to be alive.'”

Under normal circumstances, they might not be around to help someone who was injured during a rec league game at 4 p.m.

The Leafs typically practice at noon, but did not skate until 2:45 p.m. that day because the team was returning from the All-Star break and league rules dictated that no mandatory activities were scheduled before mid-afternoon.

Werner, the father of a three-month-old, went to St. Joseph's Hospital alone with just a quick message to his wife that he had been circumcised and would be OK. He was immediately admitted to a hospital bed and received his stitches at 5.15pm – just an hour after leaving the ice.

Because the ray that grazed him was so sharp, the cut was clean and easy to sew up. A local anesthetic was applied and Werner began bleeding profusely while doctors examined the depth of the wound. He had to throw away the shirt he was wearing in favor of one McVeigh dropped off for him at the hospital.

However, it was a scene of good news. A CT scan showed that the skate had cut into the muscle, but not through it, making surgery unnecessary.

One of the emergency room doctors told Werner that she plays high-level recreational hockey and vowed not to return to the ice without first purchasing a neck protector herself.

“It missed my vocal cords, my esophagus, arteries, veins, everything,” Werner said. “I'm just lucky. I'm just lucky.”

He didn't even spend the night in the hospital.

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Werner's brush with death brought him into contact with five different highly trained medical professionals between the time he was cut by the skate and the time he finally returned home for a long embrace from his wife.

Each of them told him he was lucky to walk out the door.

That made him think about all the what-if questions from a day that will almost certainly stay with him for the rest of his life.

For one thing, the weather had been unseasonably nice that Sunday, and while walking with his newborn baby, he considered skipping the hockey game altogether. What if he chose to stay home?

What if his team was short of a defender for that match and he played in his normal position as a forward instead?

What if he had gotten up and tried to get back into the game instead of skating to the bench after being cut? Would his body be able to handle the continued exertion?

What if the cut was just a little deeper or was an inch or two in a different direction?

What if the Leafs were operating on their normal schedule that afternoon and the medical staff wasn't still in the building to answer his call for help?

“I thought I was going to die and they said, 'You're not going to die. You are very lucky.' And they patched me up,” Werner said. “I appreciate them just making sure everything was OK. At that point I wasn't bleeding that much, but if I had just taken myself to the hospital, who knows what would have happened?

“In the end it was a lot of blood.”

He doesn't consider himself a religious or spiritual person, but he certainly has family and friends who believe a greater power was looking out for him that day.

It was not easy to calm his mind long enough to get a good night's sleep in the immediate aftermath of a situation in which Werner himself notes, “I almost had my child orphaned and my wife was going to be widowed.”

About the last place he expected to find when he showed up for a league game on Sunday was the Maple Leafs locker room.

He got lucky.

“I'm not a Leaf fan – I'm a Calgary fan – but I was just joking, 'Maybe I'm a Leafs fan now,'” Werner said. “Not from a team perspective, but from a behind-the-scenes perspective.”

(Photos courtesy of Ike Werner)