NHL Stops Paying for Players’ Health Insurance : Hockey: Ducks’ Kurvers learns of this as his wife is treated for injuries sustained in a traffic accident.

Mighty Duck defenseman Tom Kurvers and his wife, Suzy, who is expecting their first child in December, are going to be all right after being struck in a head-on collision Thursday night in Anaheim.

But the second jarring event of the evening came when a hospital worker at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center told the couple--somewhat inaccurately--that their insurance had been “terminated” as of Oct. 15.

The NHL has quit paying health insurance premiums for locked-out players and their families, and says it has followed federal law by giving players a 60-day notice that they can keep their coverage only if they pay the entire price for it.

But in a notification process that one team official admits the league bungled, Kurvers and others had not yet received a letter, dated Oct. 18, from the insurance carrier. He since has been assured by the NHL Players Assn. he will be covered, and was far more concerned about the baby and his wife, who has spent two nights at the hospital because she began contractions after the accident.

“She’ll be fine and the baby’s fine,” said Kurvers, who said he was waiting to make a turn when they were hit when a car crossed a median. Authorities suspect the driver was intoxicated. “Our insurance was terminated on Oct. 15 and I found that out at the hospital. I was sitting there with Suzy and they said they wanted to make sure I was aware of that. I was a little bit surprised, more than surprised.”

NHL spokesman Arthur Pincus said “no player has been without health coverage” and called the move “an option that is ours during a work stoppage. We’ve not left anybody without health coverage.”

Federal law known as COBRA allows workers who lose or change their jobs to extend their employer health coverage at their expense for up to 18 months, with a 60-day window to make a decision without interruption of coverage.

Union chief Bob Goodenow is angry about slow notification after learning of the Oct. 15 move only Thursday.

“They sent the notices by regular mail and they didn’t call us,” Goodenow said. “If they had, we would have sent out bulletins to the players and we would have notified the players we will pick up the coverage.”

Goodenow said the NHLPA will pay players’ insurance expenses during the lockout--which would amount to about $600 a month for each player, according to an NHL source.

Attorney William Shernoff, a consumer insurance lawyer with the Claremont-based firm of Shernoff, Bidart and Darras, said employers typically stop paying insurance when a player quits or is fired and said “it sounds like hardball negotiating tactics.”

Goodenow called it “highly irregular.”

“It shows a lack of regard for the employees by not promptly notifying us, the association, about the change,” he said. “(The league is) going to say he can get coverage. But it’s the trauma they were put through. It’s like what can go wrong, would go wrong. It’s really an unfortunate situation.”

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In moves that add up to no foreseeable end to the lockout, an NHL spokesman said that more games will be canceled and the NHLPA rejected an offer to look into management’s books.

Through Friday, 154 games--14.1% of the 1,092-game schedule--had been missed.

However, the league has canceled only four games from each club’s 84-game schedule, saying that games might be rescheduled.

Times staff writer Helene Elliott contributed to this story.