Top 10 Most Gruesome sports injuries: #1 Clint Malarchuk

[Sportscolumn is running down the ten most gruesome sports injuries. Here’s #1]

There’s no doubt that hockey is a brutal sport where anything can happen and blood on the ice is often more common than goals in the net. But there was nothing common about a March 22, 1989 game between the Blues and the Sabres. Buffalo goalie Clint Malarchuk was involved in the most nightmarish accident in the history of hockey as the Blues’ Steve Tuttle collided with Malarchuk at the goal and his skate accidentally severed the interior carotid artery of the goalie. Instantly, there was a massive pool of blood collecting on the ice beneath him and with every pump of his heart more blood would spurt from his gash.

I thought I was dying then, I really did. I thought I didn’t have long to live.” Malarchuk said. “All I wanted to do was get off the ice. My mother was watching the game on TV, and I didn’t want her to see me die.

And she very easily could have seen just that, but the doctors at Buffalo General Hospital didn’t let that happen as they repaired his severed jugular vein and he was amazingly released the next afternoon.

I didn’t go into any real shock. I think maybe if I had any shock, it was this morning,” Malarchuk told the press after being released. “I’m not going off on a stretcher, I never will. The day I go off on a stretcher, they’re going to have to make funeral arrangements. I’m proud of that fact that I got off the ice on my own power.

Now, that’s one tough S.O.B. Dwyane Wade could learn a lot from Mr. Malarchuk.

And here’s the actual play call as it happened live with color commentator Mike Robitaille and longtime voice of the Sabres Ted Darling behind the mics.

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