A Saskatchewan hockey player who was injured by an ice skate that nearly sliced open his jugular vein is recovering at home and says he’s grateful to be alive.
Cole Cusitar, a player for the Churchbridge Imperials, told The Epoch Times that if the skate cut had been about an inch lower he “might not have been having this conversation.”
“God was looking out for me that evening,” Cusitar, 35, said in a Dec. 11 interview.
The senior league player from Churchbridge, Sask., was battling for the puck in a third-period face-off during a Dec. 7 away game in Esterhazy when the accident happened.
Cusitar, who was looking to regain momentum because his team was down 0–5, says there was a “good little battle” going when a player with the Esterhazy Flyers got tangled and fell. That’s when he felt a cold slap across his jaw.
“Just when [the opposing player] fell, one of his back legs just come up and happened to kick me,” Cusitar said, noting that he “didn’t feel much pain at all.”
“When I started to see the blood, I knew I was in rough shape,” he added.
The player’s skate had sliced open Cusitar’s jaw, causing a near fatal neck wound.
Removing his hand, he saw blood spurting onto the ice and he hurried toward the change room immediately.
Assistant captain for the Imperials, Jonathan Jensen, who saw the accident, says the puck moved down the ice away from Cusitar, but an Esterhazy player started waving and screaming to get attention, and fans started banging on the glass.
“That’s when our trainer ran out, and then one of our other coaches grabbed our medical bag and started heading out towards [Cusitar],” Jensen told The Epoch Times, adding they rushed him into a truck and headed to the hospital in Esterhazy.
Still wearing his hockey gear, Cusitar was hustled from the ambulance onto a stretcher and into the facility. When medical staff could not stop the bleeding, he was transported to Yorkton Health Centre where the hemorrhaging finally subsided in the wee hours.
The skate had opened up a gash several centimetres wide and 15 centimetres long, slicing an artery just below Cusitar’s ear. That could have just as easily been his jugular vein.
Cusitar received 80 stitches through five layers of skin later that day.
Cusitar says he and his wife, Jody, spent the night in the hospital. “I don’t think my wife slept at all,” he said. “We’ve got two young kids at home, too, so it was pretty scary.”
Meanwhile, Jensen, who is on the Churchbridge Imperials’ board of directors, says the team is encouraging all of its players to wear neck guards to prevent such injuries in the future.
“We’re playing a dangerous sport, inherently. We’re skating around with razor blades on our feet, basically,” he said. “[Cusitar] is lucky to come out of it, absolutely.”
