A Mother’s Love Sells Thousands

When hockey injuries target the neck, the love of a mother might just save you. In the 2024-25 season, all youth players registered with USA Hockey were required to wear neck guards or some other form of protection on the neck during all games, practices, and other such events. Of the many brands of neck guards, Skate Armor has been proven to be one of the most consistent at preventing injury. Despite selling thousands today, it all started from one protective mom.

Teri Weiss, mother of Boston Bruins defenseman Mason Lohrei, started the company for her son. When Lohrei was only nine years old, the neck guard that he used was faulty and irritated his skin. It didn’t even protect him as it was supposed to, as he would often return from the rink with bruises on his neck. In an interview by the New York Times, Weiss says that, “I took my kitchen knife I use to cut chicken with… [and] literally the first pass, I sliced right through it.” After showing Lohrei the cut she made in his neck guard, he said that Weiss could make something, and “I’d wear it.”

Weiss got to work, developing a design that involved tabs covering the sides of the neck up to the ear lobes, as well as rubber on the tabs that prevented them from rolling down. She used a polyethylene Honeywell product used in gloves in the food processing industry, that are resistant to cuts called SpectraGuard. According to the New York Times, this could provide more protection than traditional collar-style neck guards, which could expose the area under the ears if the height did not align with the user.

A 2015 test by the Mayo Clinic study involved 14 different brands of neck guards. According to the New York Times, only Skate Armor and a model of the Reebok 11K held up against the compression load of 600 Newtons. For reference, it takes about the same amount of force to fracture your radius.