Monday March 22, 2021
Horror accident 32 years ago today
When an NHL goalie lost 1.5 liters of blood
It was an ordinary NHL game on March 22, 1989 when Clint Malarchuk was miserably struck by a skate. The ice hockey goalkeeper has his neck slit open and he loses massive amounts of blood. Still, he is back on the ice just a week later.
Clint Malarchuk presses on his wound with his right hand, but it doesn’t help, the blood flows incessantly from his throat, it trickles through his fingers. The ice quickly turns red under the goalkeeper, now it’s a matter of seconds. And Jim Pizzutelli knows that. The Buffalo Sabers athletic trainer, a Vietnam veteran, acts immediately, presses the slit jugular vein of the NHL goalie and saves his life.
“All I wanted was to get off the ice quickly,” says the Canadian Malarchuk later. “My mother watched the game on TV, I didn’t want her to see me die.” With the help of a coach, he leaves the field on his own and asks a team member to call his mother and tell her that he loves her. But the ice hockey professional is lucky and gets away with a shock after the wound was sewn in the ambulance. Just a week later, he’s back on the ice. Despite a liter and a half of blood loss and 300 stitches.
What happened? On March 22, 1989, Sabers defender Uwe Krupp, now the Cologne Haie trainer, fights with Steve Tuttle from the St. Louis Blues for the puck and he loses control. Malarchuk’s runner hits the neck unhappily in the collision, then time stands still in the hall. The fact that the then 27-year-old survived is thanks to Pizzutelli’s quick intervention. Two spectators suffer a heart attack when they see the pool of blood, three players vomit on the ice. The sight is too shocking, the faces of the fans turn white. Fortunately, things turn out well, but the accident has long-term consequences.
Malarchuk gets depressed, he falls for alcohol because he knows that he will be remembered forever only because of this scene. He beats his wife, and in 2008 Malarchuk tried to kill himself. But he survived that too, got the hang of it and wrote his memoirs. He then travels with his wife and appears as a speaker on the topics of mental health and depression among ex-athletes.
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