Puck Shatters Photographer's New Canon Lens at NHL Game

Carlos Gonzalez didn't even get through one game with his new glass. The Minnesota Star Tribune veteran photojournalist brought his brand-new Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM to the Minnesota Wild's April 2 home game against the Seattle Kraken, the first time he'd shot with the lens since getting it the week prior. By the time the night was over, the lens was done.

Gonzalez was working through the camera cutout in the boards, the small opening in the arena glass that lets photographers get clean, unobstructed angles on the ice without shooting through puck-scarred plexiglass. A Kraken player dumped the puck in along the boards, a textbook routine play, but the angle was perfect for the worst possible outcome: the puck caught the cutout at exactly the right height and speed, flew through the opening, and hit the front element of Gonzalez's lens dead-on. The damage was extensive.

"Trying out the new lens at Seattle Kraken vs Minnesota Wild," Gonzalez wrote on social media afterward. "The puck won."

The images of the shattered Canon circulated fast among the photojournalism community, landing in feeds of sports shooters who know exactly how exposed you are in that position. Another Minnesota photographer, Steven Garcia, replied to Gonzalez's Threads post with a grim solidarity check: he'd had the same thing happen to him earlier this season, at a Minnesota Frost PWHL game.

That kind of pile-on tells you this isn't a fluke, it's a design problem that keeps recurring. Earlier in the 2025-26 NHL season, photographer Denny Simmons had his lens shattered by a puck while covering a Nashville Predators game and came away with a cut on his nose that needed a bandage. The camera hole that makes great hockey photography possible is also an open invitation for a 100mph frozen rubber disc to do exactly what it did to Gonzalez's glass.

The cutout exists because the alternative, shooting through the boards' plexiglass, is largely useless. The glass gets gouged and hazed by pucks throughout a game, and the resulting images suffer for it. So photographers press their lens through the opening, get low, and accept the exposure. Most nights, nothing happens. On April 2, Gonzalez happened to be in the exact wrong spot on the exact wrong play.

The Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM retails around $2,700. It is not the kind of lens you absorb and move on from. The incident has renewed calls in photography circles for leagues and arena operators to rethink the cutout design, whether that means reinforced sliding covers, repositioned shooting positions, or some form of protective shielding that doesn't compromise the shooting angle. With the Wild heading into playoff hockey against the Dallas Stars within days of the incident, the question of whether photographers should have better protection at ice level isn't going away.