The Intransigent 7 : A Few NHL Players Still Refuse to Wear a Helmet During Games

Doug Wilson knows that what was once a badge of courage is today the sign of nothing more than a thick skull. But he still can’t bring himself to put on a helmet.

“I wore one for an entire season, but I never shook the feeling that I was protecting an injury,” the Blackhawks’ 33-year-old defenseman said. “So I took it off again. Because I knew if I ever played another season as bad as that one, I probably wouldn’t have a job today.”

The NHL passed a rule in June, 1979, that every player entering the league from that day forward had to wear protective headgear. Of the hundreds of players who began that season exempted from the rule, only seven are still playing--Wilson, Quebec’s Guy Lafleur, Edmonton’s Craig MacTavish, St. Louis’ Harold Snepsts, Winnpeg’s Randy Carlyle, Washington’s Rod Langway and Toronto’s Brad Marsh.

“Everybody knows who everybody else in the group is,” Carlyle, in town for a Thursday night game against the Blackhawks, said before a morning practice. “But I’m not sure that isn’t just because we’re some of the oldest guys around. I guess we’re like dinosaurs that way.

“I think it’s just a case where we all got into a habit and it’s too late to change. I mean, it’s not a macho thing . . . it’s not like we’re all trying to beat each other out and be known as the last guy around without a hat.”

In 1983, Wilson busted his nose and for the next 15 games, wore a helmet and face shield to protect the injury. Though the club’s trainer at the time begged him to keep it on a while longer, Wilson left it in his locker when he went out to play the Toronto Maple Leafs in his 16th game back and promptly caught a slapshot between the eyes that fractured his skull.

His first, and only, season in headgear followed.

“And I’ll bet in that one year,” he added almost sheepishly, “I had more cuts around the eyes than any two seasons combined.”

Like Wilson, Marsh is convinced that opposing players swing the stick more indiscriminately when the guy across from them is wearing a helmet. Carlyle finds them too warm. Others say they are too confining or that they limit peripheral vision.

But pinned down, each member of the group long ago realized that if their excuses were piled on top of one another, all they would have erected was a monument to bad logic.

“I can see how it looks to people on the outside,” Carlyle said. “I have a hard time explaining it to friends and relatives, let alone the fans who get on me.”