TORONTO — Each night in the NHL’s Situation Room, game recorders — the heartbeat of the hockey operations staff — manually trim and color-code hundreds of scenes from each contest. Purple is for refereeing. Yellow is for penalties and missed calls. For blue ram challenges and video reviews.

Red is for injuries and Player Safety. These clips include dozens of recorded close calls in which NHL players narrowly avoided potentially devastating skateboarding injuries.

“You wouldn’t believe how many there are,” said Colin Campbell, the NHL’s senior vice president of hockey operations. “We see this almost every night. “It’s really quite scary.”

Campbell informed the league’s 32 general managers on Tuesday at their annual November meeting that only 55 of 708 skaters were wearing neck braces this season.

The fact that only 7.7 percent of skaters in the league choose to protect their necks seems like an incredibly low number considering it’s only been a year. Adam Johnson’s tragic death on ice While playing professionally for the Nottingham Panthers in England last October.

The league reported positive increases in the use of at least other cut-resistant protective equipment; This includes more than 100 players now wearing cut-resistant material undergarments around the ankle area, and even more wearing similar protection around the ankle and Achilles areas with trousers.

The NHL has done everything it can to encourage and educate players and introduce more cut-resistant materials. In addition to the information provided and published in team locker rooms, data is also available on the testing of these materials, making them league-approved.

The NHL Players Association was the first to oppose mandating a league-wide equipment change based on individual player preference and comfort.

GMs were encouraged to continue those conversations with players on Monday.

“Oh, we talk about it a lot,” said Montreal Canadiens GM Kent Hughes, who previously worked as a player manager and understands the other side. “I appreciate players having a choice. I also have two sons who play hockey. They don’t really listen, but I wish they weren’t too proud to wear it for their own safety.”

In the year since Johnson’s unimaginable death at the age of 29, other leagues and levels not subject to the Collective Bargaining Agreement have taken the step of requiring neck guards. The Canadian Hockey League, including the OHL, WHL and QMJHL major junior leagues, mandated neck guards just a week after the incident. USA Hockey, as the sport’s national governing body, has followed suit for all levels under 18. And perhaps most importantly, the AHL has mandated that all players and on-ice referees wear neck braces ahead of the 2024-25 season.

Campbell said the NHL hopes that players graduating from the AHL to the league will already be used to the protection and will not see the need to remove it.

“It’s just like viewfinders,” Campbell said. “And before that, helmets.”

The AHL has long been a proving ground for the NHL. The AHL mandated visors for eye and face protection prior to the 2006-07 season; The NHL followed up with the next CBA agreement in 2013, allowing players who played more than 25 games under the old rule to be “grandfathered in” and not wear visors if that was their preference.

Nearly 12 years later, only four NHL skaters are playing without visors this season: Jamie Benn, Ryan O’Reilly, Zach Bogosian and Ryan Reaves.

In the meantime, the NHL hopes more players will investigate or try the current cut-resistant protection and prays the close calls the league is pursuing don’t turn into anything more than that. It’s as if the NHL should ask players to watch a montage of all the near-misses before the start of each season in a final plea for a re-evaluation of the risk involved in comfort. As for potentially mandating neck guards in the future, the next CBA negotiations are expected to begin in early 2025.

“We’ll add that to the list,” Campbell said.

Preparation for CBA Speeches

Speaking of upcoming CBA talks, the NHL began taking direction from GMs on Tuesday as it prepares to meet with the NHLPA.

The league is leaving it up to GMs to create a wish list that prioritizes potential changes they’d like to see in the game.

What’s on the table? According to multiple NHL GMs in the room Tuesday, things like further shortening contract length, the arbitration process, setting a salary cap for the playoffs, redesigning the use of LTIR, the post-trade deadline recall rule and even the regular season schedule everything form.

Yes, there seems to be a desire to potentially limit contract lengths as a way to save some GMs from themselves. But this isn’t universal, as some certainly like to spread dollars over a longer period of time to reduce the cap hit.

Although, as some executives noted after the meeting, they appreciate that the commissioner’s office is taking their temperature and gathering feedback — fully aware that Gary Bettman and Bill Daly will ultimately determine what is really worth fighting for with the NHLPA.

Tamper Reminder

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly issued a reminder to all 32 GMs on Tuesday about the league’s tampering rules. Daly said it’s a “refresher of what’s allowed and what’s not allowed,” a general list of dos and don’ts.

The genesis of the reminder was a series of free agent contracts reportedly agreed to last summer, one minute after noon struck July 1, the first time teams were even legally allowed to communicate with UFA players and representatives. But Daly said that’s not the only thing.

One GM said the summary of Daly’s message was short and sweet: “Don’t be the one who gets caught.” If caught, Daly reminded, the penalty would be a potentially significant fine and/or loss of a draft pick.

GM Minutes

GMs were also reminded that conversations with prospects at the Draft Combine should be kept cordial and professional, as it appears at least one team has crossed the line in pushing and questioning prospects… Perhaps the biggest talking point is the respectful final It was an NCAA rule change. Regarding CHL player eligibility, including a cross-section of information from Dan Marr, head of Central Scouting, as well as potential CBA ramifications from league executives. “There’s a lot of debate about this and there’s no real answer, and I don’t think anyone has an answer,” Campbell said… GMs were given a June date for the league’s first ‘decentralized’ Draft; Los Angeles, where teams are making selections from their own war rooms across the continent… As debate continues about the coach’s challenge and video review, Campbell asks the question: “How perfect are we making the game?” This will be decided by GMs.

Quotable

“It will end very soon and we will go back to the old ways. (Complaints.) Why? Why did you do this to us? We were ruined last night!”

— Colin Campbell, NHL senior vice president of hockey operations, describes the aura surrounding him at the GM Meeting, a day after he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the constructor category as part of the Class of 2024.