FILE - Flower tributes for Nottingham Panthers player Adam Johnson, who died last year from a skate cut to the neck, rest outside the Motorpoint Arena before a memorial ice hockey game between the Panthers and the Manchester Storm in Nottingham, England, Nov. 18, 2023. A Minnesota youth hockey camp is honoring the life of late alum Johnson with a scholarship in his honor. grew up participating in the Bulldog Hockey Camp in Duluth, Minnesota.
Camp director and University of Minnesota-Duluth director of men’s hockey operations Christian Koelling said the idea came from Johnson’s family as a way to honor him. “Adam was someone who was very important to me personally, along with the UMD hockey program and the Duluth community and Iron Range community,” Koelling told The Associated Press on Monday. “As a hockey player, he was such a unique talent, and as a person he was just so memorable. He was unique. He was kind of a quieter kid, more laidback but had just a great sense of humor and he was a great teammate and really someone that everyone enjoyed being around, someone you could count on.
Koelling, his wife, Jennie, and the memorial fund will pay the $500 enrollment fee for one of the weeklong camps this summer at UMD’s arena. In addition to going through the camps in his youth, Johnson worked at the camp while playing at the school from 2015-17.Columbus Blue Jackets fire coach Pascal Vincent after one terrible, injury plagued season“His dad played at UMD, so our coaching staff knew Adam from a very young age,” Koelling said.
Johnson made his NHL debut with the Pittsburgh Penguins in March 2019, the first of 13 games he played with them before returning to the American Hockey League and then shifting his career to Europe. Johnson spent time in Sweden and Germany before signing with the Nottingham Panthers of the United Kingdom’sThe NHL and the NHL Players’ Association have for several years been studying skate cut injuries and how to reduce and avoid them, and those discussion continue.