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Yzerman will ask all Lightning players to wear visors next year

Steve Yzerman

Tampa Bay Lightning’s new vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman answers questions during a hockey news conference Tuesday, May 25, 2010, in Tampa, Fla. Yzerman has spent the last 27 years as a player, captain, and executive with the Detroit Red Wings. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

AP

On the heels of Manny Malhotra’s frightening eye injury, NHL players and the use of visors is back in the minds of hockey people. In what seems like an annual debate, the question of whether or not visors should be mandatory has been debated on blogs, talk radio, and on intermission shows over the last week. Some players think they should be able to use whatever equipment they choose, while others think the visors should be grandfathered into the league like helmets were in the 1980s. Until the NHL speaks out and implements a comprehensive bylaw on the subject, the debate will rage on.

In Tampa, Lightning GM Steve Yzerman is attempting to be proactive on the situation before a catastrophic event forces his hand. In the wake of watching his captain narrowly escape serious injury, he will ask every player on his team to consider using a visor for the start of next season. He explained his intentions to Damian Cristodero of the St. Petersburg Times (h/t to Kukla’s Korner):

“We don’t want people getting injured. We want to keep their eyesight and noses in place, so it’s something we would like to push moving forward.”

Early returns amongst Tampa’s players have been mixed upon hearing their GM’s intentions. Vincent Lecavalier said he’s going to put the visor on during the offseason so he can get used to it before starting next season. That shouldn’t be a surprising development considering he just narrowly avoided a serious eye injury on Sunday in Chicago. He suffered a bruised cornea and a pretty severe scratch—but nothing serious. In this case, a bruised cornea was a “best case scenario.”

On the other side of the fence, Lightning winger Ryan Malone will be a little more difficult to convince. When asked how he felt about visors, he wasn’t as open-minded to the idea as his captain.

“When I’ve worn a visor in the past, at the Olympics and so forth, it’s more of a pain. I feel like I’m wasting more energy cleaning it.”
“I probably should [wear a visor]. But we all are in this from the beginning knowing, knock on wood, there’s a lot of crazy things that might happen out there with blades, sticks and pucks. It comes with the territory.”

Sure, those might not be words of wisdom, but you can’t question the man’s honesty. His argument is a version of the same argument that has been used by players for years. Invariably, the justification revolves around inconvenience for the players. Either the visor fogs up, they lose peripheral vision, or they feel like they lose their “ice awareness.” It’s just more convenient to play without a visor and risk injury.

Whether the Lightning players take Yzerman’s pleas to heart or not will be answered in September. But even if they don’t, the GM has opened up another avenue for safety in the NHL. In the past, it was always the players who would unilaterally decide to put the visor on and fans would say the NHL needed to introduce a league mandate. But with Yzerman, a new solution has been introduced. It only makes sense that a team would want to protect their players (read: investments). If a team asks the player to play with a visor, it will help players from the AHL/juniors to keep the visor on their helmets.

Further, it provides an excuse for the players who have been hesitant to put on the visor because of a perceived lack of testosterone when wearing a visor. Then again, back in the day it was the same story with helmets. Perhaps this is the first step to get all the players in the league on board one day—whether they’re mandatory or not.