A Minnesota youth hockey camp has introduced the creation of the Adam Johnson Memorial Scholarship, honoring the 29-year-old participant who died in October from a skate reduce to the neck whereas enjoying in a recreation in England.
Johnson grew up taking part within the Bulldog Hockey Camp in Duluth, Minnesota. The scholarship can pay for a youth participant whose household in any other case wouldn’t have the means to participate within the camp.
Camp director and College of Minnesota-Duluth director of males’s hockey operations Christian Koelling stated the concept got here from Johnson’s household as a strategy to honor him.
“Adam was somebody who was essential to me personally, together with the UMD hockey program and the Duluth group and Iron Vary group,” Koelling informed The Related Press on Monday. “As a hockey participant, he was such a novel expertise, and as an individual he was simply so memorable. He was distinctive. He was form of a quieter child, extra laidback however had only a nice humorousness and he was an awesome teammate and actually somebody that everybody loved being round, somebody you might rely on. Simply actually made an affect on us from a really younger age.”
Koelling, his spouse, Jennie, and the memorial fund can pay the $500 enrollment payment for one of many weeklong camps this summer time at UMD’s area. Along with going by the camps in his youth, Johnson labored on the camp whereas enjoying on the faculty from 2015 to ’17.
“His dad performed at UMD, so our teaching employees knew Adam from a really younger age,” Koelling stated. “[We got to watch] him develop up in Hibbing and are available to our hockey camps and work with him there, after which to have him come and play for the Bulldogs for 2 years earlier than transferring on and having a pleasant professional profession, which included reaching the lifelong objective of any northern Minnesotan hockey participant to play within the NHL.”
Johnson made his NHL debut with the Pittsburgh Penguins in March 2019, the primary of 13 video games he performed with them earlier than returning to the American Hockey League after which shifting his profession to Europe. Johnson frolicked in Sweden and Germany earlier than signing with the Nottingham Panthers of the UK’s Elite Ice Hockey League final yr.
His tragic loss of life helped reignite debate concerning the significance of cut-resistant gear, together with neck and wrist guards, and spurred the continued evolution of kit that may forestall comparable conditions in hockey. The Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation and USA Hockey have since carried out neck laceration safety mandates.
The NHL and the NHL Gamers’ Affiliation have for a number of years been learning skate reduce accidents and easy methods to cut back and keep away from them, and people discussions proceed. On the league’s annual pre-Stanley Cup Ultimate information convention earlier this month, deputy commissioner Invoice Daly stated, “Clearly, the occasions of this yr form of opened all people’s eyes and introduced a a lot larger concentrate on it.”