Blues player stretched off the ice after taking the hockey puck in the neck

St. Louis Blues forward Dylan Holloway was carried off the field during a game Tuesday night after he was hit in the neck by a hockey puck.

Holloway, 23, went down late in the first period of the game against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday, Nov. 5, after being hit by the foul shot. It wasn’t until he skated to the bench after the game that he started holding his neck and tilting his head to the side, ESPN reported.

The third year player out of Wisconsin was evaluated by medical personnel before being loaded onto a stretcher and then taken to a hospital in St. Louis area for observation.

“I was just sitting next to him and saw that something happened,” Blues forward Alexey Toropchenko told reporters after the game. “I told Ray (Barile, the Blues’ coach). He knows what he’s doing. I was just a little curious about what was going on. Doctors came in and I think everything is good right now. But we were concerned, all of them.”

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Blues coach Drew Bannister also showed concern for his player, who is in his first year with the team after two previous seasons with the Edmonton Oilers.

“I think the only way I can put it is if you’re at work and you get a call and one of your family members is sick and you rush to the hospital,” said Blues- coach Drew Bannister. “Holly is a family member. It was tough. I thought as a group we showed a lot of courage and the way to mentally push through because the easiest thing is for your head to go somewhere else. But we were able to get updates on Holly and kind of calm our minds and refocus ourselves.”

According to the teamHolloway was alert and in stable condition at the hospital.

Still, the incident shook his fellow teammates.

“It’s tough,” Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. “That’s your teammate. Then we got the news that he’s going to be fine. And then you’ve got to wrap your head around it a little bit and play a hockey game again, right? So, unfortunately, that’s just the reality of the sport, and that took us a while to get going.”

Hockey teams have put a greater focus on neck protection in the past year following the death of Adam Johnson, a player in Great Britain who died after his throat was cut by another player’s skate blade during a game.

USA Hockey, the American Hockey League and the International Ice Hockey Federation now require players to wear neck protection during games, and while the NHL has yet to make the same rules, some players have chosen to wear them.