New York Islanders tough guy Matt Martin announced his retirement this week, and that means that the phenomenon of NHLers without shields continues to move toward extinction, like the Amur leopard, the orangutan, and landline phones.
Martin spent all but two years of his NHL career on Long Island and was part of one of the best fourth lines in hockey for years alongside Cal Clutterbuck (who announced his retirement back in April) and Casey Cizikas. He will now serve as special assistant to Isles general manager Mathieu Darche.
But as mentioned up top, Martin was one of the last players in hockey to eschew visors.
This leaves just four players in the league — Ryan O'Reilly of the Nashville Predators, Jamie Benn of the Dallas Stars, Zach Bogosian of the Minnesota Wild, and Ryan Reaves of the Toronto Maple Leafs — who are still raw-dogging it as far as face protection is concerned.
It's kind of wild because we've pretty much reached the point where a guy without a visor is like seeing the last of the players to not wear a helmet. Craig MacTavish played without a helmet until 1997, about 18 years after the NHL started mandating brain buckets (the league grandfathered in all of the players who had opted to go helmetless before that).
According to Sportsnet, the NHL and NHLPA agreed in 2013 that new players would be required to wear visors.
You can understand why they would opt for them even if they didn't have to. They're used to them from playing juniors or in the minor league, but also, why wouldn't you want to protect those peepers? I mean, binocular vision is pretty great.
I remember helping to coach my brother's bantam team when I was like 18 and would skate at practice without a visor, and I would constantly have Final Destination-like visions of a puck ricocheting off the post and clobbering me in the eye hole.
But the last few players not wearing visors are built differently, and I think when the last of them hangs up their visor-less brain bucket, it'll be the last time we see that in the NHL.
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