The Pittsburgh Penguins issued a statement remembering Adam Johnson, a former NHL forward player with the team who died after a skate cut his neck.
Johnson, a player with the Nottingham Panthers, died after a tragic accident during the second period of a game against the Sheffield Steelers Saturday night. The Penguins took time to honor Johnson prior to Monday night’s game against the Anaheim Ducks, according to a statement from the Penguins.
While competing in a Challenge Cup game between the Panthers and the Steelers, the blade of Matt Petgrave, an opponent, cut Johnson’s throat.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones,” Sidney Crosby, captain of the Penguins, said in the statement. “He’s just a great guy, a great teammate, had an awesome attitude while he was here, just genuinely happy to be playing in the NHL. So, it’s heartbreaking that that’s happened.”
The Penguins shared moments of Johnson’s first performance with the team, including the first moment that he scored a goal with fans rising to their feet and clapping as the teams circled around the ice rink, according to the statement.
Instead of silence, the Penguins asked for the crowd to give a final cheer for Adam Johnson. Quite a moment. pic.twitter.com/48TBRn4vh4
— Josh Yohe (@JoshYohe_PGH) October 30, 2023
“He was a great kid, he was a good player,” Mike Sullivan, head coach of the Penguins, said. “Boy, he could really skate. It was a privilege to be his coach. There are no words I have to explain how I feel about the whole circumstance. It’s just an incredible tragedy.”
During Johnson’s first year with the Penguins, the Minnesota native played in Wilkes-Barre Scranton during the 2017-2018 season.
Tom Kostopoulos, director of player development with the Penguins and team captain at the time, described how Johnson had been “getting used to pro life after leaving school early, and his college team went on to win the national championship two years in a row.”
“He’s one of those kids you could picture out on a Minnesota lake, just skating all day with his hockey sweater kind of floating behind him,” Kostopoulous added.
In response to Johnson’s death, Petgrave has received criticism and backlash, though the hockey player has not publicly commented on Johnson’s death himself. Fox News host Jesse Watters described Petgrave as a “dirty player” and added that it looked like “homicide” to him.
“Did this kid make a movement that was very unorthodox? Do I think that he was trying to make contact of some sort? Absolutely,” former NHL player Sean Avery said during an interview with Watters. “Do I think he woke up and said, ‘I’m going to murder someone today?’ No. I want everybody to be very careful and I want you to understand one thing, the technology in our skates over the last 20 years, it’s… it’s incredible. It’s a titanium blade, it’s a thinner blade, it’s much sharper than the blades we skated on 20 years ago, the traditional steel.”
Chris Therien, a former NHL player with the Philadelphia Flyers and the Dallas Stars, wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he was “appalled and sickened” after witnessing the incident, adding that “it looked intentional” like a “Kung fu kick.”
