Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger recalls his ‘scary’ heart event

Pronger was 23 years old and competing with the St. Louis Blues in the Western Conference Semifinals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when he was hit in the left chest by Detroit Red Wings defenseman Dmitri Mironov.

Like Hamlin before his fall on the field, Pronger managed to stand up after the crash and took two steps before falling to the ice. Teammates huddled around Pronger. Both sports coaching staffs rushed to his side.

Neither Blues coach Ray Barile nor team physician Dr. Aaron Birenbaum could find a pulse in Pronger’s neck or wrist. Prongers lips were blue and turned bluer by the second, while his eyes were rolled back into his head. Barile was cutting Prongers shirt and shoulders to prepare for CPR when he suddenly woke up.

The lights go out and all of a sudden you wake up and I was staring at the ceiling sets of Joe Louis Arena, looking at retired numbers and banners and what not, Pronger recalled in a phone interview Tuesday with the Buffalo News. I kind of turned and looked around and we had guys crying on the bench, not knowing what was going on. My device was cut open, everything was cut open with scissors.

Pronger was rushed to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and diagnosed with commotio cordis, an arrhythmia caused by a blow to the area directly above the heart at a critical time during the heartbeat cycle.

Each subsequent test showed that there was no risk to Pronger continuing his career. He played two nights later and helped the Blues advance to Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals, which they lost to the eventual Stanley Cup winner Red Wings. Pronger appeared in 949 games, regular season and playoff, over the next 13 years.

Pronger, now 46, is unsure of the medical explanation for the frightening incident, which stemmed from a routine procedure that left Hamlin in critical condition Tuesday afternoon at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Doctors across the country have suggested the signs point to commotio cordis, and video of Prongers’ shot quickly went viral on social media as people around the world awaited word on Hamlins’ status.

I got hit with a puck, my heart skipped a beat, and so much oxygen goes through your body in one heartbeat,” Pronger added. So I went down. It was a scary, scary situation. I think when you see a football player in that situation with what happened, it didn’t look like the bigger hits we’ve seen this year and in years past.

But you could tell from Damar’s fall that he was under duress and how quickly the medical staff went to treat him and the players. Realizing the magnitude of the events, it certainly hits home.

All these years later, Pronger admits he didn’t realize the severity of the blocked shot. All he cared about was his availability to the Blues, who were trying to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup. It wasn’t until he was seen by cardiologists, including Dr. Barry Maron, a prominent commotio cordis specialist, that Pronger realized the seriousness of the situation.

In retrospect, Pronger is thankful she wasn’t married and didn’t have kids yet. Like many athletes, he thought he was invincible. He didn’t realize how lucky he was to regain consciousness so quickly, or how unlucky he was that the incident happened at all.

Maron, now a professor of medicine at Leahy Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington, Mass., did not immediately recall Prongers’ shot when reached by phone Tuesday. These cases of commotio cordis are so rare in professional sports that memory faded over time. But the way Hamlin tackled Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins and then got up before collapsing on the field led Maron to one conclusion.

Most likely this is commotio cordis, Maron said. Could be other things, but I think the overriding impression is that, and it’s defined as a blow to the chest that causes an arrhythmia that can be fatal. And I think that’s what happened here just because of the circumstances of the clinical profile. It’s unusual because of the pattern it has, and it requires great timing of the strike, which explains why a fairly average Takla or strike here, repeated hundreds and thousands of times, didn’t produce the same result.

The shock must be timed to a specific 30-millisecond window during the rise of the T wave on the EKG. This has all been clarified in experimental models. So, you must be unlucky with the timing because there was nothing really unusual about the strike in terms of football.

Pronger didn’t collapse immediately after blocking the shot because it can take a while for ventricular fibrillation, an irregular rhythm, to set in, Maron said. He added that defibrillation can and has in many cases reversed commotio cordis and resulted in full recovery.

Appearing on a podcast with retired professional goaltender Mike McKenna in July 2019, Blues coach Barile recalled how Prongers’ reaction to the oncoming shot caused his shoulder to expose his chest wall.

Pronger was unresponsive after the collapse. This was before Automated External Defibrillators were mandatory in public spaces such as sports fields, so Barile prepared to perform CPR. In 1997, Florida became the first state to enact a broad public access law to authorize AEDs. However, Pronger woke up before it was needed.

“From what I understand, Chris is one of the few people who has been hit by a chest wall, suffered commotio cordis, turned around and is alive,” Barile said on the podcast. So we were very lucky.

Pronger knew moments after turning on the “Monday Night Football” broadcast that Hamlin’s hit was unlike anything seen in recent years. Back home in St. Louis, Pronger saw Bills and Bengals players sob. Many were unable to watch as trainers performed CPR on Hamlin. The broadcasters spoke in hushed tones.

65 minutes after Hamlin collapsed on the field, the NFL officially postponed the game. Athletes from around the world took to social media to express their support for the sophomore defensive back. The Sabers canceled their media availability Tuesday morning after their skate at Capital One Arena as players and coaches processed and hoped for good news.

In situations like this, the human perspective takes over and humanity itself really takes over and you really have to peel back the onion a little bit and look inside at what’s really going on and what’s happening, Pronger said. . And really note and consider how huge this is for professional sports that this could happen.