What HECC Certification Actually Required

What the label does not tell you

What HECC Certification Actually Required

You are standing in a pro shop or reading a product page. There are initials on the label. They carry weight. But weight toward what, exactly?

Most players know the certifications exist. Few know what they require. That gap is not a consumer failure. It is an industry failure. These marks do real work. The translation has not happened publicly.

What follows is a factual account of what each mark means, where it came from, and what the process of earning one actually requires. Not what they suggest. Not what a marketing team wrote about them. What the process asked.

The landscape · How these certifications came to exist

A brief history of neck laceration protection standards

In the 1980s, two players died in Quebec from skate blade lacerations to the neck. Community stakeholders demanded a response. The result was CAN/BNQ 9415-370, published in 1990 by the Bureau de normalisation du Quebec. Quebec mandated neck protectors for all ages in 1992. Hockey Canada and Ringette Canada followed in 1993, requiring BNQ-certified protection for all minor league players. BNQ was the first standard to define what neck protection should survive and how to test it. It predates every other standard in this category by more than a decade.

In Europe, the CE mark emerged as a market access framework covering a wide range of product categories including protective apparel. CE indicates that a product meets European health, safety, and environmental standards for its category. For many product types, including Ice Hockey Protection, it is a self-declaration: the manufacturer asserts compliance. In some categories a notified body must verify the claim. A product can carry CE and fail BNQ. A product can carry BNQ and not carry CE. They answer different regulatory questions for different markets.

In October 2023, Adam Johnson died during an Elite Ice Hockey League game in Sheffield after his neck was cut by the skate blade of an opposing player. He was 29 years old. The event prompted the international hockey community to act in a way previous incidents had not. Within weeks, leagues at every level were evaluating or implementing mandatory neck laceration protection requirements.

In January 2025, HECC, the Hockey Equipment Certification Council, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit established in 1978 at the request of USA Hockey, launched a neck laceration protector certification program, appointing CSA as the third-party validator. The underlying standards adopted were ISO 10256-1:2024 and ISO 10256-5.2:2025, international consensus standards developed through technical committee participation across multiple countries.

At the time of writing, USA Hockey rules accept both HECC and BNQ certifications for neck laceration protection. Beginning with the 2027-28 season, HECC certification becomes the sole accepted standard under USA Hockey rules. BNQ-only certified products are permitted as a bridge through the 2026-27 season to allow manufacturers and retailers time to transition. The sport is converging on a single governing standard.

Standard 01 · The most current standard

HECC / CSA: ISO 10256-1:2024 and ISO 10256-5.2:2025

HECC does not write standards. It selects them from already-approved consensus standards and appoints a third-party validator to conduct testing. For neck laceration protectors, CSA is that validator. The standards HECC adopted are ISO 10256-1:2024 and ISO 10256-5.2:2025. These are the international standards a certified product must satisfy at every batch, for as long as it carries the mark.

ISO 10256-5.2:2025 defines two product types. Type E1 has a bib that extends below the neck to cover the anterior thoracic region. Type E2 does not. The standard requires Type E2 products to carry a written warning that Type E1 with a bib is recommended. That language is the standard committee’s own position on relative protection. The classification is assigned at certification and is documented in the product’s certificate.

The cut resistance requirement under ISO 10256-5.2:2025 uses a different protocol than the ANSI scale discussed later. Nine cuts are performed per ISO 13997:2023 at a fixed force of 10 Newtons, approximately 1,020 grams, at the area of least expected protection. The standard specifically identifies the seam between the bib and neck part as that location. Each cut uses a fresh straight blade in a single linear stroke. The pass condition is a normalized cutting stroke length greater than 20mm: the blade must not cut through the material within 20mm at that force. All nine results are reported individually. Tests are performed on washed samples after three wash cycles.

Coverage is tested by fitting the protector onto a size-matched neck form and verifying it meets minimum protected area dimensions at zones around the neck region. A stability and recovery test follows: the protector is pressed down 10mm at the upper edge, then released. It must return to covering the required protected area within 10 seconds. This tests whether displacement during play compromises coverage.

HECC certification is not a point-in-time event. It requires an ongoing production quality system at the manufacturing and brand level, with CSA as an active oversight body. The mark on the product is a record of a sustained commitment, not a single successful test.

Standard 02 · The historical standard

BNQ: CAN/BNQ 9415-370

BNQ is a performance standard, not a materials standard. It does not specify what to build from. It specifies what the finished product must survive. The standard is rooted in the specific physical scenario that created it: a skate blade making contact with the neck during a hockey collision.

The test requires a BNQ auditor to travel directly to the manufacturing facility and hand-select three samples from the production line. The manufacturer does not submit samples. The auditor chooses them. Each sample is cut three times, for nine total cuts. The test simulates the force of a skate blade collision at speed. The blade is resharpened between every single cut. Not one of the nine cuts may reach the final layer of fabric before the skin. Not a reduction in penetration. A full stop.

Resharpening between every cut ensures each of the nine is evaluated against a consistent edge. The test is not looking for average performance. It is looking for worst-case consistency, nine times over, at a factory the auditor visited without prior sample selection.

Annual recertification audits are required. Any change to materials, shape, or construction requires a full re-test. The certified version is the version that was tested, and no other version can carry the mark.

Standard 03 · The European market framework

CE: Conformité Européenne

CE indicates that a product meets European health, safety, and environmental protection requirements for its product category. It is a market access requirement for the European Economic Area, not a hockey performance certification. For protective apparel in this category it is largely a self-declaration: the manufacturer asserts compliance. It tells you a product can be sold in European markets. It does not tell you what it survived to get there.

Standard 04 · The material measurement

The ANSI scale: A1 through A9

The ANSI/ISEA 105 scale measures how much force in grams is required to cut through a fabric on a TDM-100 Tomodynamometer machine. A straight blade makes a single linear pass across the material. Multiple cuts at varying forces identify the threshold at which the material fails. The result is reported in grams on a scale from A1 to A9. A1 begins at 200 grams. A9 exceeds 6,000 grams. For reference this is a range of .4 lbs. to 13 lbs. of direct blade force on a single-use extremely sharp and controlled blade.

The ISO 10256-5.2 certification cut resistance test and the ANSI scale use the same machine and the same blade geometry, but ask different questions. The ISO certification test fixes the force at 10 Newtons and asks how far the blade travels before cutting through. The ANSI test varies the force and asks how many grams are required to achieve cut-through. Ten Newtons is approximately 1,020 grams, or just over two pounds of blade force. A product that just meets the ISO certification cut resistance requirement would test at approximately ANSI A3, which requires 1,000 to 1,499 grams. In pounds, the certification floor sits at roughly two pounds of blade force.

Beginning with the 2026-27 season, the NHL rulebook sets A5 as the minimum cut resistance requirement for players with zero NHL games of experience, in accordance with the ANSI/ISEA 105-2016 standard. A5 requires 2,200 to 2,999 grams, or roughly five to six pounds of blade force. It is the first time a specific ANSI threshold has appeared in a North American professional hockey league’s governing rules. The rule explicitly acknowledges that higher levels afford greater protection. A5 is the floor. Where a product sits above that floor is a decision each manufacturer makes, and one worth asking about.

Publishing an ANSI rating tells a player something the certification mark does not: where on the material scale the fabric actually sits. A product can carry full HECC certification, full BNQ certification, and every other mark on the label, and you still have no way of knowing where its cut-resistant material sits on that scale unless the manufacturer publishes it.

Materials above A5 on the ANSI scale impose documented trade-offs in weight, breathability, and structural flexibility. Those trade-offs matter. What is directly in contact with the skin, what moves with the body across three periods, cannot impose a physiological cost that players will respond to by removing or adjusting the protection.

At the time of writing, no published peer-reviewed research we have been able to source has quantified the forces generated by skate blade lacerations in real game conditions.

The build · What bringing a certified product to market actually requires

This is not an easy process. It should not be.

The certifications described above are the marks a product earns. The manufacturing control and capabilities required to sustain them for athletes are what makes these certifications so significant. A certified neck laceration protector is not a product that passed a test once. It is a product built inside a system designed to produce the same result, to the same standard, at every batch, with documented proof that it did.

That system runs from the first meter of incoming cut-resistant fabric through the final signed release of a finished batch. It requires a single certified facility, a single certified build, calibrated instruments verified annually down to the ruler used to measure the neck panel, technicians trained and refreshed on a defined schedule, three testing gates before a unit can ship, and a complete record of every material lot and date code that ships with every order. Any safety concern about the product bypasses the factory entirely and goes directly to the certifying body.

The facility that produces the Cut-Pro Shirt™ makes garments. Cut and sew is the craft. It is not aerospace manufacturing. What it is, is a partner who agreed to operate inside a quality management system more demanding than anything else in their building, and has executed it precisely. Asking a garment facility to calibrate their washing machine annually, to track every meter of fabric to a specific lot number, to stop an entire production run over a single measurement outside tolerance, is not a small ask. They said yes. Then they built the systems to back it up. Finding partners willing to do that is most of the work.

This is what protective equipment for athletes requires. Not because the process is bureaucratic. Because the product sits between a player’s neck and a skate blade, and the margin for inconsistency is zero.

The variable that determines whether any of it matters

Coverage

The certifications require it. The tests verify it. The marks communicate it. And then a player decides whether to wear the protection correctly.

A December 2025 study by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at UNC Chapel Hill captured 26 catastrophic ice hockey laceration injuries across 43 years, from 1982 to 2025. The neck was the most common site, accounting for 15 of the 26 injuries. Five of the 26 injuries resulted in death. Of those five fatal injuries, three athletes were reportedly not wearing neck protection. The study does not report a single case, across all 15 neck-laceration injuries in the dataset, of a confirmed fatality while wearing protection.

The standard writers understood this. ISO 10256-5.2:2025 requires Type E2 products to carry a written warning that Type E1 with a bib is recommended. It specifies the stability and recovery test precisely because a protector that moves out of position is not protecting. BNQ requires minimum coverage areas because coverage is not a default outcome. It is a designed and verified condition.

The mechanism that undermines coverage in the real world is not recklessness. It is discomfort. Equipment that raises core temperature, impairs evaporative cooling, adds bulk, restricts movement, or irritates the skin gives the player a concrete physiological reason to adjust it. That reason compounds across a game. Players learn when referees conduct equipment checks. They know what the check requires them to show. They make rational decisions about what they wear between checks and what they adjust when enforcement is absent. This is not a player attitude problem. It is a design problem. Equipment that imposes a physiological cost will be worn reluctantly and adjusted when no one is watching.

The integrated shirt format addresses this structurally. A neck panel sewn into a base layer a player is already wearing for performance reasons cannot be rolled down without removing the shirt. The decision about compliance is made in the locker room, not on the bench. The velcro closure that runs from the neckline down toward the shoulder blades serves two functions. First, it allows proper fit across the range of neck circumferences within a given shirt size, which is what makes the coverage dimensions achievable across the size run. Second, it allows emergency access to the back of the neck and upper spine without removing the shirt. Sports medicine protocols for the helmeted athlete with suspected cervical spine injury are clear: access to the airway and neck must be achievable without moving the athlete. A shirt that opens at the back achieves that. A shirt that must be pulled over the head does not.

The first edition of ISO 10256-5, published in 2017, contained a specific requirement: neck laceration protectors shall be quickly and easily adjustable and shall allow easy access to the protected area in an emergency. That language does not appear in ISO 10256-5.2:2025, the current standard governing HECC certification. It was not carried forward in the revision. Evermade read both versions. The reasoning behind that original requirement is sound and documented in emergency response literature for athletes with suspected cervical spine injuries. The design kept it. The standard stopped asking for it.

These are design decisions, documented here not as product claims but as the reasoning behind choices not visible from the outside of the garment. Reading more than the certification requires, and building to the standard that reasoning supports, is the only version of this work that makes sense when the product sits between a player’s neck and a skate blade.

How much do you know about the protection you are wearing right now? Does it cover the right area? What cut resistance level is the material? What certification does it carry and what did that certification actually require? And when no one is checking, is it still in place?

Four questions. Every player should be able to answer them.