It was a routine play for Clint Malarchuk. St. Louis right winger Steve Tuttle was charging toward the Buffalo Sabres' goalie with defenseman Uwe Krupp closing in from behind.
As the puck flashed through the crease, Krupp grabbed Tuttle and Tuttle's leg kicked into the air, his skate blade slicing through the exposed flesh under Malarchuk's mask.
Nearly 14 years later, Malarchuk remembers his first words to trainer Jim Pizzutelli:
"Am I going to live?''
"I did think I was done," said Malarchuk, now the Panthers' goaltending instructor. "Somewhere I'd heard that if you cut your jugular vein you've got a matter of minutes, like three minutes. I was going through the minutes preparing to die. I thought I had just three minutes to live and I've got a lot of repenting to do in three minutes."
Malarchuk's injury on March 22, 1989, at Buffalo's War Memorial Auditorium, was one of the most horrific in sports history.
Blood spurted onto the ice from Malarchuk's lacerated neck. Two spectators suffered heart attacks at the grisly sight and at least two Sabres vomited.
Pizzutelli didn't panic. He was no stranger to blood and gore, having served in Vietnam, but he had never seen anything like this at a hockey rink. He reacted quickly -- the videotape shows that 14 seconds passed from the time Malarchuk was cut until Pizzutelli closed off the artery by applying pressure with his hand wrapped in a sterile pack.
"I don't know how much blood he lost, but it was a lot," said Pizzutelli, the Sabres' trainer for the past 17 years. "We were very lucky. Our doctor said what happened was he lacerated the external jugulars. Maybe another eighth of an inch and there's nothing you could have done."
Malarchuk struggled to stay conscious, sensing that if he did pass out he'd never wake up. Aware that his mother had been watching the game on TV, he had an equipment manager call and tell her he loved her. Then he asked for a priest.
Something in his mind was telling him to get off the ice, "because I didn't want to die on the ice. I was saying prayers. I was scared."
Soon he was on his way to Buffalo General Hospital, where a team of doctors spent 90 minutes and used 300 stitches to close the wound, which also included severed muscles and tissue.
Malarchuk had been traded to Buffalo less than a month before the injury and had played in only a handful of games with the Sabres, so fans had no idea how he would be affected. They started getting an idea of his resolve when he appeared at the arena in street clothes two days later and got a standing ovation -- "That was one of the most emotional times of my life" -- and was back in uniform a week after that.
"I grew up in a rodeo environment, where if you get bucked off a horse you get right back on," Malarchuk, 41, said. "While the media was speculating my career was over, I was just saying, 'The sooner I get back in there, the better off I'll be.' "
As the puck flashed through the crease, Krupp grabbed Tuttle and Tuttle's leg kicked into the air, his skate blade slicing through the exposed flesh under Malarchuk's mask.
Nearly 14 years later, Malarchuk remembers his first words to trainer Jim Pizzutelli:
"Am I going to live?''
"I did think I was done," said Malarchuk, now the Panthers' goaltending instructor. "Somewhere I'd heard that if you cut your jugular vein you've got a matter of minutes, like three minutes. I was going through the minutes preparing to die. I thought I had just three minutes to live and I've got a lot of repenting to do in three minutes."
Malarchuk's injury on March 22, 1989, at Buffalo's War Memorial Auditorium, was one of the most horrific in sports history.
Blood spurted onto the ice from Malarchuk's lacerated neck. Two spectators suffered heart attacks at the grisly sight and at least two Sabres vomited.
Pizzutelli didn't panic. He was no stranger to blood and gore, having served in Vietnam, but he had never seen anything like this at a hockey rink. He reacted quickly -- the videotape shows that 14 seconds passed from the time Malarchuk was cut until Pizzutelli closed off the artery by applying pressure with his hand wrapped in a sterile pack.
"I don't know how much blood he lost, but it was a lot," said Pizzutelli, the Sabres' trainer for the past 17 years. "We were very lucky. Our doctor said what happened was he lacerated the external jugulars. Maybe another eighth of an inch and there's nothing you could have done."
Malarchuk struggled to stay conscious, sensing that if he did pass out he'd never wake up. Aware that his mother had been watching the game on TV, he had an equipment manager call and tell her he loved her. Then he asked for a priest.
Something in his mind was telling him to get off the ice, "because I didn't want to die on the ice. I was saying prayers. I was scared."
Soon he was on his way to Buffalo General Hospital, where a team of doctors spent 90 minutes and used 300 stitches to close the wound, which also included severed muscles and tissue.
Malarchuk had been traded to Buffalo less than a month before the injury and had played in only a handful of games with the Sabres, so fans had no idea how he would be affected. They started getting an idea of his resolve when he appeared at the arena in street clothes two days later and got a standing ovation -- "That was one of the most emotional times of my life" -- and was back in uniform a week after that.
"I grew up in a rodeo environment, where if you get bucked off a horse you get right back on," Malarchuk, 41, said. "While the media was speculating my career was over, I was just saying, 'The sooner I get back in there, the better off I'll be.' "
I can only imagine what would happen if someone was to die on a playing field. The media is already in freak-out mode about unusual sports occurrences. We've had our brushes with immediate death on the field (Ray Chapman dying some days later; Darryl Stingley's paralysis; this one) and with athletes getting so much bigger/ stronger I can only think it'll sadly happen some day.