Adam Johnson: rollercoaster of emotion on first anniversary of player's death with no closure in sight

The death of the Nottingham Panthers player after being struck on the neck by an opposition player's skate during a match in front of 8000 fans, is still too difficult for many to process.

At a memorial service on an ice pad in Hibbing High School in Minnesota, Johnson’s school coach, Mark Dezenco, spoke for all: “There’s a rollercoaster of emotion - frustration, joyful memories, sadness, anger … constantly asking all kind of whys.”

Those questions remain unanswered. Investigations into Johnson’s death are on-going. Police have described it as a complex inquiry into an unprecedented incident, and have already engaged highly specialised experts. A man arrested on suspicion of manslaughter has been re-bailled again, and his case has been continued until November. In Sheffield, the senior coroner has suspended her investigation while the police inquiry takes its course. Closure for the family, fans, and the sport, is perhaps many months away.

Johnson’s death continues to have a profound impact. Ice hockey doesn’t live in the limelight. It is built around strong geographical pockets of support - fiercely partisan, noisy, passionate fans whose lives revolve around the weekend fixture schedules, and who think nothing of criss-crossing the UK just to see a game. The ties that bind run deep.

Teams in the UK are largely made up of imports - players from across North America and Scandinavia mainly - but, without fail, whether they touch down in Kirkcaldy and Dundee or Nottingham and Sheffield, they will find themselves sharing a dressing room with someone from back home. Ice hockey is a global sport and a small community.

Johnson only played 12 games in the UK - many fans didn’t even see him skate in their own rinks - but his career had taken him from the National Hockey League (NHL) around the world.

Immediately after his death, flowers were laid outside every single Elite League rink. Candles were lit, and some fans placed a hockey stick on the doorstep - a gesture to honour the loss of one of their own.

And those rituals were repeated everywhere Johnson played, made lasting friendships and left memories of a great player and an even finer man; from Hibbing High to the University of Minnesota-Duluth, to Pittsburgh Penguins and its affiliate team, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, to Malmo Redhawks in Switzerland, to the Ontario Reign in Canada - where team-mates laid his jersey at centre ice - to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, Pennsylvania and on to Augsberger Panthers in Germany.

In Kirkcaldy, on the first game after the tragedy Fife Flyers’ player Kyle Osterberg wore Johnson’s name and number 47 on his warm-up top to remember his University of Minnesota-Duluth team-mate and friend. On the first game after his death, he scored and immediately pointed to the skies; a deeply personal moment in a week when the sport was swamped in grief.

The floral tributes have long since wilted, but the sense of loss has not. Ice hockey has continued, and the sense of hesitancy which marked those first shifts on the first game after the tragedy has receded, while the mandatory neck guards now worn are a visible, physical reminder of what happened 12 months ago.

The league has done all it can to throw an arm around teams, players and fans and guide them through the darkest of times, all in the knowledge there simply wasn’t anything in the manual to tell them how to do it.

It cancelled all games immediately after Johnson’s death, paused all media access to players and coaches - to let them come to terms with what had happened without being asked a difficult or inappropriate question - and then paid moving tributes at every single rink where teams intertwined at the centre circle and coaches laid wreaths.

One year on and it has quietly moved its traditional Hallowe’en themed games back one week into November to allow for an appropriate league wide commemoration on the first anniversary of the players death. This weekend there will be applause before every game across the league. It’s another opportunity for fans to unite and remember the player, but for some, the sport will never be the same again.

There remains a huge amount of anxiety among supporters, particularly those who witnessed the tragedy first hand - the reports of fans shielding their children’s view of the ice pad on that evening and hugging each other in the concourse convey just how distressing it must have been. It has taken a huge effort for some to step back into a rink or arena, even with the knowledge of the warmth and support that awaits within the crowd, and there are occasional moments when you can still sense a slight intake of breath if a player goes down injured during a game.

For Johnson’s Nottingham team-mates, the first anniversary will be another emotionally tough moment. The floral tributes that covered Bolero Square have gone. In their place sits a plaque to the player with the words “forever our 47” in memory of the jersey number he wore and which will formally be retired on December 14 when Fife Flyers are the opponents. Johnson’s family will join fans in the arena for the poignant ceremony.

At a memorial service on the ice pad in Johnson’s home town, Kevin Moore, assistant coach of Panthers at the time of the tragedy, spoke of Adam Johnson, the person and the hockey player - a man who was humble, unselfish, with a contagious smile, who “ inspired our team to live joyfully for each other.”

He said: “Adam loved the people of Hibbing - blue collar, hard working, short off their back type of people, just like the people in Nottingham. That’s why he inspired so many people to wear #47 on their backs at games as they now wear #47 in their hearts forever.”

One year on, the rollercoaster of emotion Mark Dezenco spoke of will embrace everyone on the ice and rinkside on this most painful of anniversaries.