‘Am I going to die?’: Neck guard saves life of Casper Youth Hockey Player during freak accident

NOTE: The following story contains injury photos that could be upsetting to some readers. Discretion is advised.

CASPER, Wyo. — Lauren Lein was in the stands with the rest of the crowd when she saw her son, Carter, go down on the ice. Then, he immediately got back up and was holding his neck, the fear in his eyes unmistakable.

A freak accident involving Carter and a player from the opposite team led to that player’s ice skate cutting Carter’s neck. Even with a neck guard, the injury was a serious one.

Without it, Carter could have been killed.

In August 2024, USA Hockey implemented a mandate that required all hockey players and on-ice officials — aged 18 years and under — to wear a neck guard at all times while on the ice. The mandate was put in place after the death of former NHL and European hockey player Adam Johnson in an accident similar to Carter’s.

A tragic accident

On Oct. 28, 2023, in front of 8,000 spectators, Johnson collided with a player on the opposite team and fell toward the ice, at which point another opponent inadvertently “kicked up” his left skate, which Johnson landed on. BBC Sports reported that Johnson got up and attempted to skate back toward his team’s bench before collapsing. In an act of solidarity, Johnson’s teammates formed a protective circle around him, shielding him from onlookers.

Johnson was rushed to a local medical facility, where he was pronounced dead.

USA Today reported that, prior to his death, Johnson had purchased an engagement ring that he planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend with.

Johnson’s death prompted an investigation and examination of player safety in the world of hockey, which resulted in several mandates to wear neck guards. In addition to the USA Hockey mandate, the AHL requires all players and on-ice officials to wear neck guards, as do all of the Canada Hockey Leagues, the English Ice Hockey Association and others.

It was a mandate made too late, but it was one that, quite possibly, saved Carter Lein’s life.

The similarities between Johnson’s death and her own son’s accident were enough to bring tears to Lauren’s eyes and a chill that ran up her spine when she detailed the incident to Oil City News.

“This time last year, players weren’t wearing neck guards, which is a scary thought,” Lauren said. “But I saw Carter go down, and right then the other team had scored a goal, so we were all just kind of distracted. But then I saw Carter on his knees, kind of holding his neck, and I saw him skating off the ice without some of his gear. He left his gear on the ice and started skating toward the bench. So I got up and started walking very slowly, watching Carter.”

Lauren said that she kept walking toward the lobby, en route to the players’ bench. She still didn’t know exactly what was happening, but she knew her boy was hurt. She knew it before a medic confirmed it, in the way that only a mother can know certain things.

“Somebody call 911”

Her husband, Nick, who is also one of the coaches of the Casper Oilers, put his arms up in the air and asked for a medic.

“Is there a doctor in the house” has become a cliché line, but that’s exactly what was needed. As luck would have it, there were many medics in attendance that night.

“Thankfully, we had a lot of parents and grandparents in the medical field that were at the game,” she said, “so he started calling to the audience, saying that they needed help. And I saw the team’s trainer, who is also the father of our team’s goalie, get over there. When I saw Nick call for help, I started running.”

Lauren said that the thoughts going through her mind as she ran to the team’s bench are blurry. Her adrenaline was high. She yelled for somebody to call 911 but, she says, four or five people were already doing so.

“A parent in front of me started running toward the bench too, because she was also a nurse,” Lauren said. “She didn’t know how she could help, but everyone was just kind of running to help. When I got to the bench, one of the coaches was clearing the players out of the way so we could get closer to Carter. The team manager, Heather Grossman, was on the right side of Carter, on the bench, holding the right side of his neck, and Clay Wilson, the team trainer who was also in the medical field, had taken off his own sweatshirt and was holding it to Carter’s neck to hold pressure.”

Lauren finally got to the bench, and was immediately placed in front of her boy.

“They just guided me to sit right in front of Carter and just kind of talk to him and keep him calm,” she remembered. “He was being so calm, but he was also crying and saying, ‘I’m so scared, I’m so scared,’ because he remembered vividly the hockey player that passed away from a neck injury like this.”

Johnson came to Carter’s mind immediately, the boy said.

“Am I going to die?”

“I was facing the puck and I did trip my opponent, accidentally,” Carter said, “and when I tripped him, he was going down and while he was going down, his skate came up and got me good in the neck. I didn’t really feel it because of adrenaline, but I knew something happened.”

The blade of his opponent’s ice skate had lacerated his throat.

“I put my hand on my neck, skated over to the bench and I dropped my gloves and was yelling to open the door cause I got cut in the neck,” he continued. “My dad — he’s one of the coaches — he saw me and knew immediately what happened, so he put his arms up and was yelling for a doctor, and then everyone jumped in in a millisecond. Everyone was asking me questions; they were holding my neck, they were yelling, they were screaming, and I heard the buzzer.”

Carter said that his mind immediately jumped to Adam Johnson, and that thought — more than the actual cut — is what scared him the most.

“Am I going to die?” Carter remembered thinking. “I’m scared. Like, ‘What do I do?’ I started thinking of places that I wanted to be other than that place. I was trying not to focus on it, but it was hard because of the pain.”

The right people were in the right place at the right time, and they were able to apply pressure to Carter’s neck until the ambulance arrived, which, Lauren said, only took a few minutes.

“We had, I believe, 20-plus calls that went into dispatch for 911,” she stated. “One of Nick’s former coworkers is a deputy at the jail; he ran out to his truck and got a medical bag, which he brought in to get gauze to apply pressure until EMTs got there. And thankfully, the hospital was just two blocks away from the ice arena and EMTs and firefighters got there within minutes — I’d say two or three minutes.”

Time, as it tends to do in situations like these, both slowed down and sped up, Lauren said.

“It was amazing how so many people leapt into action,” she said. “And as a parent, Nick and I — we were there to keep Carter calm, but you just move into survival mode. You don’t have time to really feel, like, ‘This is my child, this is terrifying.’ You just have to act. You have to do what you’re being told to do. You have to keep him calm. You just have to survive in the moment, instead of feeling it, or you’ll completely lose it.”

A coach’s perspective

Kevin Anderson, head coach of the Casper Oilers 12U team, did his best to keep his team — and the team members’ parents — calm as well.

“Obviously, Nick was with Carter, so from that point I took on the role of just clearing our kids off the bench,” Anderson said, “so that they had plenty of room to work. And I didn’t really want the kids to be seeing what was going on. We were just trying to keep trauma at a minimum.”

Anderson said that while he heard some complaints at first about having to wear neck guards, he thinks those complaints will disappear now, for the most part.

“Obviously the protective equipment is there for a reason,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not always the most comfortable stuff to wear, but it’s put on for a reason and things like this really open your eyes as to how quickly freak accidents can happen. So you follow those guidelines, the rules that have been put in place, because they help you. Had Carter not been wearing that neck guard, we could be looking at a much different situation here.”

In a different town, or a different setting, with different people, this accident could have torpedoed into bedlam. However, the parents, staff and players all kept calm, and everybody did what they needed to do. Once EMTs arrived, they took Carter to the ambulance, and the rest of the spectators let him know that he was strong, that he was loved and that he wasn’t alone.

“When he was getting wheeled out of the arena on the stretcher, you hear the crowd just go wild for him,” Lauren shared. “Like, ‘We love you, Carter’ and clapping. It was just incredible. The whole crowd, our fans, the Park City fans — everybody just erupted for him. It was incredible.”

Speaking of incredible, Lauren said that her husband — the love of her life — was just as responsible for taking care of Carter as anybody else.

“Nick has been playing hockey for 30 years,” she beamed. “He’s been a coach of Carter’s for a couple of years now. And when he saw Carter coming off the ice, he didn’t know what happened so he told Carter to remove his hand so Nick could look, and that’s when Nick saw the gash. And he jumped into complete action. Nick’s able to kind of reflect back on it now, and it’s hitting him very hard because he was the first person to see it. And it’s not just seeing that kind of injury in person, or seeing it happen to a player that you’re coaching. It’s your own child, your own son that’s bleeding from the neck. So it hit Nick really hard, but he was able to jump into action, calling for people, applying pressure before anyone else, directing people to do things. Everything that he was supposed to do, he did.”

Much like the neck guard, Nick’s actions — and the actions of everybody else — saved Carter’s life.

“This was one of those situations where you hear it happening, but you don’t think it could ever happen to you until it does,” Lauren said, “and that’s our biggest thing; we just want people to know that this little piece of equipment that may seem super annoying to people and may seem like just another thing that they have to worry about before a game — it literally saved Carter’s life. The EMTs, the nurses on scene, Dr. Duette, the ER doctor, everyone said that it saved his life because it was about an inch away from his artery, and if he hadn’t been wearing the neck guard, [the skate] would have gotten it.”

Austin Lee, the club coach of the Casper Amateur Hockey Club, was quick to thank the decision that was made by USA Hockey.

“I’m so happy that USA Hockey made its recent rule change, mandating the use of neck guards in youth hockey in the United States,” Lee stated. “The game of hockey moves at an incredibly high speed and accidents can happen fast. As a coach, this type of injury is your worst nightmare and I cannot tell you how proud I am of our coaching staff and first responders who managed this incident. Although an injury still occurred, the protection provided by the neck guard kept this from being a more serious and life-threatening injury. I’m so grateful that the equipment served its purpose and that my player is going to be OK because of it.”

Nick and Lauren are grateful, too — for the neck guard, for the medics and maybe even for a little bit of goodwill from the universe.

“As a player, you just never think something like that is going to happen to you,” Nick stated. “And then, when it comes to coaching and having your own kid and other people’s kids out there, it’s everybody’s worst fear. But I’m super grateful that this mandate has been implemented.”

What the future holds

Carter said that the injury was scary but that he was mostly OK. When asked if he saw himself playing hockey again, the hesitation in his voice was notable — and understandable.

“I’m still thinking about it,” Carter said. “Like, when I was in the hospital, I was telling my parents I never wanted to play again. I didn’t want to do anything like that. But today, I’m really stuck because just a few days before, in school, I had to write a little poem, and I said that if an injury happened it would ruin my whole dreams. And that was only like two days before it happened. So it’s just…I don’t know yet.”

Both of Carter’s parents understand his hesitation, and they’ll support any decision he makes. In the grand scheme of things, hockey is just a game. But that game almost cost them their son’s life, and they’re just happy that he’s OK. They’re happy and they’re grateful because they still get to hug their boy at night. They get to have more birthdays and more Christmases. They get to see their boy grow up, and that’s more important than any game, any sport.

“We have insane gratitude for the Casper Oilers program,” Lauren said. “The Casper Oilers players and parents and coaches for making sure that all the kids were wearing neck guards — we’re thankful to all of them. And the hospital staff. We just want this to bring more attention to how important this piece of equipment is. I would argue that it’s one of the most important pieces of equipment, and now, we will thank God and the universe and everybody for the rest of our life for this piece of equipment. “

Carter agreed, but he wanted to thank a few more people as well.

“A lot of my teammates were really, really good teammates,” he said. “Like, they didn’t want to play after that, after seeing a teammate go down like that. And one of my teammates, his name is Jackson Calanchini — a couple kids told me that he taped my number on his jersey, and I thought that was really, really cool.”