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Protecting the Eyes
by Alanah McGinley on 10/22/07 at 01:51 AM ET
Comments (2)
From Damian Cristodero at Tampa Bay.com,
The debate over visors in the NHL, believed to be the last major league in the world that doesn’t mandate some kind of facial protection, is not new. But it gained traction this season with several high-profile injuries of unprotected players.
Devils defenseman Colin White could be out for the season after a Sept. 19 practice incident in which a puck deflected into his right eye, broke his nose and blurred his vision.
Tampa Bay’s Chris Gratton is playing, now with a visor, but still has blurry vision in his right eye from being clipped in the cornea by an errant stick blade in a preseason game. Lightning star Vinny Lecavalier needed three stitches in his right eyelid when he was clipped.
This at a time visor manufacturers say their product has never been more sophisticated and addresses players’ main complaints of distorted vision and moisture buildup with “optically correct” designs and clear coating to reduce fog.
Filed in: NHL Talk, Hockey Equipment | KK Hockey | Permalink
Comments
I think it was Draper, wasn’t it, who when someone asked him if it would be a difficult adjustment to wear a visor mentioned that it “didn’t seem to bother Hank (Zetterberg) very much.”
To me, it’s like wearing safety glasses or goggles in a lab. Yes, they are uncomfortable, yes, goggles make unattractive lines around your eyes, yes, you are extremely unlikely to splash anything in your eye because you are always careful, but on the tiny chance you do, if you get an acid burn to your eye and go blind it doesn’t matter if you wear eye protection religiously every minute you’re in the lab after that. You only get one shot at avoiding an accident, and if you miss out on it because you don’t want to be a little uncomfortable, you are s.o.l.
Posted by Baroque from Michigan on 10/22/07 at 02:15 PM ET
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You can fix a broken nose, a broken cheekbone, broken jaw, lost teeth, a cut lip, a split forehead from a helmet pressure cut, you can fix just about everything on the human face--except your eyes.
I’ll never understand why players think that adjusting to a $50 sheet of Lexan is so damn hard when so many visors really are distortion-free now, have eliminated the “lip” effect, and they significantly limit the number of eye injuries a player can incur.
Hell, if these guys knew how badly it hurts to get your nose really fixed after years and years of breakage, they should put visors on for that reason alone.
Dany Heatley uses the biggest visor available, and it goes down to his upper lip, but it doesn’t seem to have affected his 50-goal-scoring prowess. Marian Hossa, Chris Drury, Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg, Joe Sakic, Paul Stastny, Anze Kopitar, Sidney Crosby, Alexander Ovechkin, and 16 of the NHL’s top 20 scorers at this point wear visors.
Tell me again why it’s such a bother to protect one’s eyes…
Posted by George James Malik from South Lyon, MI on 10/22/07 at 01:50 PM ET