Hockey Puck Penetrates Player's Helmet, Now The Player Claims He Now Longer Can Penetrate His Wife

A Los Angeles hockey player isn’t just claiming a cracked helmet ruined his game. He’s claiming it ruined his marriage in the most intimate way possible.

Ivan Zenchenko, 32, says a puck smashed through his Bauer Re-Akt 55 during a USA Hockey-sanctioned game on Sept. 27, 2025, at the LA Kings Valley Ice Center. The suit alleges the shell split, the puck reached his head, and blood hit the ice. He hasn’t played since. The headline-maker is what happened after he left the rink.

His wife, identified in reports as Sofia or Sonya, is suing alongside him for “loss of conjugal fellowship, sexual relations, and companionship.” In plain English: she says the man who came home from that game is not the same husband in bed. Attorney Paul Sigelman told reporters they no longer have the same sex life and that Ivan is “completely disabled.” In California, that isn’t just pillow talk. It’s a recognized damages claim. If an injury takes away a sexual partner, the spouse can put a price on it. Sigelman called the couple’s losses a potential multi-million-dollar hit.

That’s the part the internet latched onto, and for once the filings match the chatter. The complaint doesn’t hide behind medical jargon. It puts sex on the docket next to traumatic brain injury, memory loss, vision problems, shock, and an inability to work. Zenchenko restored luxury cars before the hit. His lawyer says he still wants to play hockey again. His wife is now working as a housekeeper and, according to counsel, supporting the household on her own.

The defendants are Bauer Hockey and the Pure Hockey store in Anaheim where he bought the helmet on July 3, 2025. The couple alleges a manufacturing or design defect and claims the gear was recommended for competition use without a proper warning. The suit says the helmet “differs from manufacturing specifications and design from other typical units” in Bauer’s line.

Bauer has not admitted a defect. Helmet companies have a standard answer for these cases: the warnings are on the box, the sport is violent, and no piece of plastic turns a frozen rubber disc into a Nerf ball. That argument works better when the claim is “I got a concussion anyway.” It gets harder when the allegation is that the puck went through the helmet and the marriage went with it.

California law gives the wife her own cause of action. She doesn’t have to prove she took the puck to the head. She has to prove she lost the husband she had. Courts call it loss of consortium. Tabloids call it what it is. The couple’s lawyers are betting a jury will hear “no more sex life” and see a jackpot, not a risk every adult accepted when they laced up.

The medical file may be real. Brain injuries wreck more than highlight reels. They wreck memory, work, mood, and, yes, intimacy. That still leaves the only question that matters in a product case: did Bauer sell a helmet that split when it shouldn’t have, or did a hard sport do what hard sports do?

Until a court answers that, the story isn’t just about a cracked Re-Akt 55. It’s about a couple telling a jury that one slap shot didn’t just end a hockey night. It ended the part of the marriage nobody puts on Instagram.