I personally think that the visor should be voluntary. As a former hockey player, who played at the Major Junior level, I found it a pain in the ass more than anything. It can distort your peripheral vision, and they can fog up at times, which is a real pain.
I can honestly say that the half visor, which is what is worn by a majority of players in the NHL, isn’t as protective as one would imagine. You can still get a stick to the eye, from under the visor. The only way to totally eliminate the eye injury thing would be to make a full cage mandatory, which won’t happen.
As for the rules governing helmets,
This rules did have a grandfather clause when it first came in. The last player to go helmetless was Craig McTavish. The last player before him was Rod Langway of the Washington Capitals. The last player who wasn’t grandfathered in who played without a helmet was Brett Hull, who, in the 1996 All-Star game, played without a helmet in a protest to demonstrate how little the players actually cared about playing to win in the All-Star game, to the point that he had no worries about getting hit.
Adam, this is the exact same illogical argument I already dismissed in my post. Just because it’s still POSSIBLE to be injured wearing a helmet does not mean that wearing a helmet won’t reduce that possibility. Once again, I point you to the seat belt. It’s still POSSIBLE to be injured while wearing a seat belt, is it not? People are still injured while wearing them, are they not? So would you argue that it’s pointless to wear a seat belt?
I don’t care how old they are, an employer that does not insist on proper safety precautions is negligent. It’s exactly akin to a construction company not requiring hard hats and safety shoes, or a factory not installing safety guards and cutoff switches on machinery.
Maybe it did happen in the NCAA and maybe it didn’t; to be honest, the constant “the sticks are getting higher” whining isn’t convincing to me when you look at old tapes or listen to accounts of the game back in the day; certainly to my eyes they carried the sticks just as high. What I DO know happened in the NCAA is the total elimination of eye injuries. So they could be carrying the sticks higher, but nobody’s getting their eyes damaged. Introducing face shields eliminated eye injuries. Introducing face shields would eliminate eye injuries in the NHL.
And frankly, one of the reasons sticks are being carried higher (and the game is getting dirtier in other areas) is simply non-enforcement of the rules. Want to get the sticks down? Assess a major and a game misconduct if your stick comes into contact with a player above the shoulder when the player’s on his feet. Even if it just brushes him. They’d come down in a hurry.
This is one my pet peeves. Every year the league makes noises about cracking down on various offences and every year the crack downs peter out as the season goes on.
I completely agree with RickJay, if high sticks become a problem, then call more high-sticking penalties. Crack down on obstruction and make it stick. Some lazy back-checkers hook from behind so egregiously they look like they’re water-skiiing. And while I’m dreaming, I’d also like to see the institution of no-touch icing. I think that would drastically cut down on the number of hitting from behind incidents.
I was in a St. Louis tavern watching that game against the Blues. Tilley was actually lifted into the air and into the Sabres’ goalie Malarchuk by the Buffalo defenseman, so it could not have been more accidental, thank God. Nonetheless, a huge scrum involving all ten skaters and all three officials immediately ensued behind Malarchuk’s net, as he knelt on the ice holding his throat, slowly exsanguinating. It was many, many agonizing seconds before a doctor could run all the way down ice and help apply pressure to the wound. The doctor later said that had Malarchuk not had the good fortune of guarding the net adjacent to the Zamboni entrance leading to the dressing room that period, he would have bled to death.
Also, it’s worth noting that the vessel severed was actually the jugular vein and not the carotid artery. This is important because had it indeed been the carotid, there is almost no doubt that Clint Malarchuk would have died at the rink that night, possibly even right there on the ice. Arteries pump blood under far higher pressure than veins due to the musculature inside them, and cleanly severed arteries (as with a sharpened steel skate blade) lack the nerve stimulation to close off the opening that ripped or crushed arteries have. This is why the arteries lie deeper inside the tissue than veins, to give them extra protection. If you saw the pond of blood that spurted out of Malarchuk, whose pounding heart no doubt wasn’t helping his situation, you know how huge it was. A completely severed carotid artery would have made that look like a little puddle.
One final testament to the iron bollocks of NHL goaltenders in general and Clint Malarchuk in specific: He went on to play in a playoff game TEN DAYS AFTER THIS INJURY. (He was wearing a plastic and foam collar that I believe he invented IIRC.) I thought goalie Mike Liut took the prize by playing a period and a half with a ruptured testicle, but this is right up there. Hockey players are known more than any other athletes for their ability to play with disabling injuries, so the remark above about Paul Kariya being a GQ kind of player or whatnot was not really fair. Sure, he’s a highly skilled smaller player, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least that he played with a bunch of teeth knocked out. Broken bones take about six weeks to set up, but these guys routinely throw a cast or splint on and come back in as little as ten days.