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No stigma about visors anymore

Pascal Dupuis and Brad Marchand

It’s been almost a decade since Don Cherry caused an uproar in Canada with his comments about visors.

“Most of the guys who wear them are Europeans and French guys,” Cherry said on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada in January of 2004.

The remarks even led to an investigation by the country’s federal Official Languages Commissioner, which is charged with “upholding the language rights of Canadians and promoting linguistic duality and bilingualism.”

But that was then.

This is Bruins forward Milan Lucic -- who just so happens to be Cherry’s kind of player on Cherry’s kind of team -- now: “The perception that guys wearing visors are soft is long gone.”

“There is no stigma,” added Boston coach Claude Julien, one day after the NHL’s competition committee recommended making visors mandatory for incoming NHL players.

And just for good measure, Penguins coach Dan Bylsma concurred.

“I don’t think there’s a stigma to wearing a visor anywhere close to where there used to be,” said Bylsma. “I don’t know how far you’d have to go back for that, but I don’t think it’s there at all.”

For the record, Cherry predicted back in 2004 that visors would become mandatory: “You cannot have half the league wear them and half not.”