The number of NHL players still playing without face visors is dwindling, only a handful left

TORONTO (AP) — Ryan O’Reilly has had the conversation a number of times. Family members will often call or text to tell the veteran NHL center again that it is time to put on a visor.

Sticks have nicked O’Reilly’s face. Pucks and skate blades have come perilously close to his unprotected eyes. There have been plenty of close calls.

Those moments haven’t changed his thinking despite the coaxing from loved ones.

“Every time I get a little stick or anything, even a little scrape, they’re always looking at me,’” O’Reilly told The Canadian Press. “But hockey players are creatures of habit. It’s just something I’ve been so used to.”

The 34-year-old Nashville Predators forward is among a handful of NHL skaters without facial protection.

The league instituted a rule change ahead of the 2013-14 season that stated all players with fewer than 25 games of experience at the time “must wear a visor properly affixed to their helmet.”

The dwindling list of competitors without “windshields” to suit up in the NHL this season includes O’Reilly, Dallas captain Jamie Benn, Minnesota defenseman Zach Bogosian and two enforcers, the Islanders’ Matt Martin and Toronto’s Ryan Reaves.

The 35-year-old Martin hasn’t dressed since the mid-January because of injury, while the 38-year-old Reaves cleared waivers last week and was demoted to the American Hockey League.

The clock, in short, is ticking on players of the visor-less vintage.

“My mom is always telling me to put it on,” Benn said. “But I’m not going to change my ways.”

The NHL has had significant eye injuries in the past, perhaps most notably when Toronto’s Bryan Berard, who wasn’t wearing a visor, took an accidental high-stick from Ottawa’s Marian Hossa in March 2000. The blueliner was effectively left blind in his right eye — Berard could only distinguish between light and dark — but eventually returned and played seven more professional seasons.

Bogosian said despite the risks, he “wouldn’t know any different” when it comes to his unimpeded view.

“Something I’m used to,” said the 34-year-old. “There’s certainly some close calls, but I don’t really think about it.”

A couple of scary moments prompted Predators coach Andrew Brunette to don a visor partway through his playing career.

“We didn’t know any different,” said Brunette, who started playing pro hockey in 1993. “You could say it was a little bit of the culture.”

Players in junior, the NCAA and the AHL wear visors or full cages, so why take the gear off under the hockey’s brightest lights?

In an interview earlier this season, Reaves said he was stopped by teammates before his first NHL game with the St. Louis Blues in October 2010.

“I had a visor going out for warm-ups,” he recalled. “David Backes and Cam Janssen said, ‘If you want to be a tough guy in this league, you can’t wear a visor.’ They ripped it off my helmet and I never put it back on.”

“I’ve taken a few sticks by the eye,” Reaves added. “My mom, all the time, wants me to put one on.”

Benn captured the Art Ross Trophy as the NHL’s leading scorer in 2014-15. He’s mostly made his money with pucks on his stick. He can’t recall why he became anti-visor.

“Thought it was cool, I guess,” said the 35-year-old forward.

Dallas center Matt Duchene, who also played alongside O’Reilly in Nashville, has respect for the old-school approach.

“The game’s fast and stuff happens out there,” said the 34-year-old Duchene, who remains eligible to play minus a visor. “You’ve got to protect yourself, but I love to see (them) with no visor.”

He also cautioned: “You can fix everything south of your eyes.”

O’Reilly didn’t feel pressure to shed the visor when he entered the league with the Colorado Avalanche in 2009. But there might have been a subconscious motive.

“Maybe it helped me look a little tougher than I actually am,” he joked. “Maybe I felt I had a little more grit to my game taking it off.”

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