Safety Issues Still a Sticking Point for NHL Players

In the weeks since he was hit in the throat by a rocketing slap shot that nearly killed him, Montreal Canadien winger Trent McCleary has received dozens of suggestions on how to better protect himself.

“One guy basically sent me a suit of armor, like a big cage that goes around you,” said McCleary, who needed a life-saving tracheotomy and surgery to repair his fractured larynx. “He said you can slide into the boards at 50 mph and not get hurt. It’s like a space suit.

“You can’t wear that. This is a game that’s played at such high speed, you want to be as light as possible. It’s a risk-reward thing.”

McCleary was lucky. He regained his voice and is working to regain the weight and muscle tone he lost during a harrowing ordeal that began with a routine attempt to block a shot by Philadelphia’s Chris Therien on Jan. 29.

McCleary can speak only in a monotone, but is going to voice therapy. He plans to play hockey again.

“It was such a freak thing,” he said. “I was close [to death], but what are the chances I’ll be that close again? You’ve got to play without worrying about what could happen.”

Toronto defenseman Bryan Berard won’t get to make that choice.

Accidentally struck in the right eye March 11 by the stick of Ottawa forward Marian Hossa, Berard suffered a cut on his cornea, a detached retina and a broken orbital bone. He can distinguish light but is not likely to regain enough vision to resume his NHL career.

A visor--a clear plexiglass face shield that extends to nose or mouth level--might have spared him. He wore face protection growing up but removed it in the NHL, joining an estimated 80% of the league’s players.

“I look at it two ways,” said Tom Laidlaw, Berard’s agent and a former NHL defenseman. “Professional athletes are adults. If they want to take the risk, they can. What happened to Bryan is the worst thing I’ve gone through as an agent. I have two sons, and I don’t want them to go through that.

“The flip side is, if I’m an owner and I’m spending all that money on salaries, I’m going to say to these guys, ‘I want to see you protected.’ ”

Berard, the 1997 rookie of the year and a 1998 U.S. Olympian, will see his doctor again Friday. In six months, doctors will implant a new lens in his eye.

“They’ve been very honest,” Laidlaw said. “They told us, ‘The chances of you seeing like you saw before are practically nil. The question is, how much vision will you recover?’ They don’t know. It’s still early.

“He’s 23 years old and it really sounds corny, but he dreamed of being a great player. He was really driven. And now this.”

The nature of hockey makes injuries inevitable. Pucks hurtle through the air at 100 mph and carom off bodies, boards and glass. Muscular men wearing sophisticated equipment crash into each other. Sticks penetrate pads and break bones. Skates slash skin and muscle. It has always been so and always will be, and players accept that.

But must it be so dangerous?

The NHL made helmets mandatory, but only after a phase-in process and only with cooperation from the NHL Players Assn. Players who were in the league before the 1979-80 season were permitted to play bareheaded. Others, such as Wayne Gretzky, wore eggshell-thin helmets that weren’t approved by the Hockey Equipment Certification Council or other standards organizations.

Some don’t wear helmets in practice or they remove padding, reducing the helmet’s ability to absorb a blow. Others loosen the chin strap, increasing chances that the helmet will pop off.

“There are some things that it’s tough for us as a league to be responsible for,” said Colin Campbell, the NHL’s director of hockey operations. “You can say, ‘You have to wear seat belts,’ but how do you make people buckle up once they’re in the car?

“We do a lot of things to help individuals. The NHL likes to protect its assets. But players have to protect themselves. We’ve given suspensions to guys whose hits cause concussions. Our job is to protect teams’ assets, the players, and to protect the players from each other.”

Doctors say banning checks into the boards from behind would reduce the frequency of spinal injuries. That’s based on a study in the Canadian Medical Assn. Journal that found at least 243 spinal injuries--and six deaths--were suffered by amateur players in a 30-year period starting in 1966.

Many youth leagues ban such hits. Some, including those affiliated with the Canadian Hockey Assn., also require throat protectors and full facemasks, not only the clear shields.

Studies have also found that mouth guards minimize the effects of concussions by distributing the force of blows to the jaw, but only about 25% of players wear them. Paul Kariya, the Mighty Ducks’ left wing who has had four concussions, wears one.

“I could never get used to something in my mouth,” Campbell said. “Some guys can. At the NHL level, that’s a personal choice.”

The NHL has paid serious attention to concussions in recent years. Pat LaFontaine, Brett Lindros, Jim Johnson, Jeff Beukeboom and Nick Kypreos retired because of multiple concussions, and the career of Flyer center Eric Lindros is in question since he recently suffered his fourth concussion.

The numbers of reported concussions and games lost to concussions have not risen in the last few years, according to NHL spokesman Frank Brown, and with more teams and players, that may mean preventive measures are working.

Berard’s misfortune has become a flash point for debating whether players should be required to wear visors.

“It’s the easiest question in the world,” said Toronto eye specialist Rob Devenyi, who examined Berard. “Everyone should wear a full visor. Period.”

But it’s not that simple.

Full face protection--masks similar to those worn by baseball catchers--is mandatory up until age 18 for male and female players in the U.S., Canada and Europe, and in college. Canada’s junior leagues, the NHL’s traditional talent source, permit players to play without face protection after they turn 18. The NHL can’t require its players to wear visors because rules governing equipment are collective bargaining issues and NHLPA officials say that only players should decide what they wear.

“There could always be more protective equipment. But some things, like equipment for the neck and visors, should be our choice,” said McCleary, who wears a visor because of two eye injuries. “We’re adults. We know what we’re getting into. They made helmets mandatory, and that’s good. But you can’t force us to wear visors. . . .

“Your vision isn’t as good and it fogs up.”

That’s the common complaint from players, who were asked about visors in a union survey on safety issues that began before Berard’s accident. Others say visors are for scorers or soft players.

When defenseman Eric Weinrich played in Chicago, he was told Blackhawks didn’t wear visors. He took his off, but went back to it when he was traded to Montreal.

“We went through that era with helmets too,” King General Manager Dave Taylor said. “If you were a Boston Bruin, you didn’t wear a helmet. . . . I wouldn’t want to play without a visor. I think it’s going in the direction of wearing them.”

Said Mighty Duck defenseman Oleg Tverdovsky, “Maybe some people think you’re a man if you play without it, but that’s stupid. When I was 16, 17 years old, I saw some terrible injuries to the eyes of people playing without visors.

“This game gets so dangerous. There are pucks and sticks all over the ice. And it’s not on purpose. Most of it is accidents. The game is getting faster and guys are getting stronger and bigger. You can’t take chances with your eyes.”

Perhaps a dozen players have put on visors since Berard’s accident, and about a dozen more say they will try them this summer. But others, such as King center Bryan Smolinski, won’t voluntarily give in.

Smolinski wore facial protection in college and his first year in the NHL but stopped “because it was one of our rights. . . . It’s hard enough for the fans to know who’s out there with a helmet on. If you put a cage on, they’re not going to know who the hell is on the ice.”

Smolinski suffered a scratched cornea and cut near his eye when he was hit by a stick early this month but decided against wearing a visor--and he doesn’t appreciate being told to wear one.

“It’s our right [not to wear one] and it should stay our right,” he said.

Emile Therien is president of the Canada Safety Council, a nonprofit organization that educates the public about recreational and workplace safety. He wants to see all NHL players wear visors--but can’t persuade his son Chris, whose shot injured McCleary, to wear one.

“I’d like to spank him,” Therien said. “I was on Chris’ case a long time. The issue is, they fog up. Players sweat. He told me it affects his peripheral vision.

“The issue here is technology. It hasn’t really improved much. It’s a sad indictment. Hockey doesn’t realize we’re living in a high-tech world. Teams will spend millions of dollars on fancy scoreboards and graphics and not on one of their biggest assets: their players.”

In advocating visors, Therien cites a study of sports-related eye injuries by ophthalmologist Tom Pashby. In the 1974-75 season, before youth hockey players in Canada were required to wear facemasks, Pashby found there were 258 eye injuries, 43 of them blinding. In 1996-97, 12 eye injuries were reported, three of them blinding. Requiring visors, Therien said, “will happen within two years. If the league and players won’t do it, the government and insurance companies will. Think about it. Players have insurance policies, and insurance companies won’t want to pay all that money.”

A study of the junior-level U.S. Hockey League in 1998-99 by Dr. Michael J. Stuart of the Department of Sports Medicine at the Mayo Clinic found players who wear no facial protection are twice as likely to suffer a facial injury as players who wear a half-shield. Those who wear a half-shield instead of a full mask have twice the chance of suffering a facial injury.

He also found that those who play without facial protection have an 8.5 times greater chance of suffering an eye injury than players wearing a half shield.

Taylor hasn’t asked King players to wear visors, but he expects visors to someday be required. And Taylor, whose career was ended by a severe concussion, insists players securely fasten their helmets and wear helmets in warmups and practices.

“I started playing with Luc [Robitaille] and Jimmy Carson in the late ‘80s, and they were after me to wear a visor,” he said. “Three times in a row I got hit in the nose and I put a visor on. I took it off and then I was hit in the nose again. I ended up playing my last five years with one. I took a number of sticks off the visor.”

It’s too late to protect Berard. He has insurance, and Laidlaw said, “Finances are not a concern.” But what’s the price of a career and a normal life?

“We leave it up to the players, but we might start saying things about visors,” Duck General Manager Pierre Gauthier said. “Kids have had protection all their lives. There’s no reason to take it off now. I think the taboos are gone, all that ‘chicken’ talk. . . .

“If we can save one eye in 10 years, it’s worth it. There’s a human tragedy there, Bryan Berard the human, never mind the hockey player. It’s a shame we only talk about it after a tragedy.”

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Times staff writer Jim Hodges contributed to this story.