The Week Ahead....
It’s just over a week since we woke to the terrible news on Sunday October 29 that Nottingham Panthers’ Adam Johnson had passed away following an horrific injury sustained the previous evening.
The UK All Stars family covers pretty much the whole of the UK with players and volunteers and supporters in Sheffield and Nottingham. Like the whole UK hockey community we were all deeply saddened and shocked by the incident.
All Stars of course sends love and condolences to the family, friends and teammates of Adam Johnson. We have seen across the hockey world in the past week just how highly Adam was thought of as a player and as a person.
We also keep in our minds and hearts the players of Nottingham and Sheffield, the team staff, first responders, volunteer medics and everyone who witnessed the tragic events and have been coming to terms with everything since then.
Like a number of outlets, we and our wonderful Team Mind shared some signposts for organisations that can help and support in times of trauma like this, and we hope that everyone involved is getting or can get the help, love and support they need. Even now people will still be looking to express their feelings and we encourage everyone to talk - whether with a member of your family, a friend or a professional from one of our signposted organisations.
Last weekend, like the rest of UK hockey, we paused our rollout of registration for Sheffield 2024.
Now as the action on the ice resumes, we too will resume and player registration will open later this week. In the coming days we’ll have news from one of our teams and we will introduce our team captains before opening up for registrations.
We can confirm that All Stars 2024 will follow the EIHA guidance on neck guards and all players selected will be required to wear neck protection during all on-ice activity at Sheffield 2024.
Thank you for your continued support of All Stars, keep looking out for each other and we look forward to another successful year.
All Stars Committee
November 2023