AHL mandates cut-resistant neckwear for all players and officials
The AHL will require cut-resistant neckwear for every player and on-ice official starting in 2024-25, putting safety on the same footing as routine gear.
The American Hockey League will require cut-resistant neck protection for every player, referee and linesperson starting with the 2024-25 season. The AHL Board of Governors unanimously approved the move in August 2024, turning neckwear from a personal choice into a league standard across the ice.
That makes the AHL one of the clearest proving grounds in hockey for how safety rules become normal equipment habits. The mandate reaches beyond skaters and into the officiating crews, a sign that the league is treating neck laceration risk as a system-wide issue rather than a problem for individual players to manage on their own. AHL President and CEO Scott Howson became the public face of the decision as the league moved to formalize a protection measure that had already been gaining traction in other parts of the sport.
The timing carried obvious weight after the 2023 death of former NHL player Adam Johnson, who died after a skate cut to the neck during a game in England. That tragedy pushed a wider hockey conversation about how to limit the damage from rare but catastrophic contact injuries, especially in a game built on speed, collisions and crowded traffic around the boards and crease. Cut-resistant neckwear is designed to create a barrier against skate blades and other sharp-contact incidents, and while it cannot eliminate every danger, it can reduce the severity of an accident that might otherwise be life-altering.
USA Hockey had already moved in the same direction earlier in 2024. Its Congress approved neck laceration protection legislation at the Winter Meeting on Jan. 28, requiring the equipment for players in all age classifications other than adults in games and practices, and for on-ice officials under 18, beginning Aug. 1, 2024. USA Hockey continues to strongly recommend neck protection for adult players, a stance that put added pressure on the professional game to follow with a firmer rule.
That is where the AHL’s decision carries the most reach. The league sits directly between amateur hockey and the NHL, and equipment standards adopted there often ripple outward through manufacturers, trainers, junior programs and players who start treating new protection as baseline gear. Helmets, visors and throat protection all followed similar paths at different points in hockey history. With this mandate, the AHL is helping make cut-resistant neckwear part of what normal hockey safety looks like at the sport’s top developmental level.
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