Easy on the Eyes

It was a horrific sight, but one not uncommon in the NHL.

Bryan Smolinski of the Kings, wearing the same type of open-face helmet favored by about two-thirds of the league’s players, gathered a loose puck along the boards and looked up to clear it out of the King zone.

From behind, Ramzi Abid of the Phoenix Coyotes reached out his stick to hook the King center, hoping to impede his progress or prevent him from playing the puck.

King defenseman Mattias Norstrom, in a move as old as hockey itself, in turn lifted Abid’s stick with his own, attempting to clear a path for his teammate.

Inadvertently, however, Norstrom lifted Abid’s stick right into Smolinski’s unprotected face, the blade slicing through the cornea of Smolinski’s left eye. Face down on the ice, legs flailing, Smolinski thought for a moment that he’d lost his eye.

Yet, when he returned to the lineup a month later, Smolinski was hesitant to add a plexiglass eye shield to his helmet, even though it would have prevented the injury and kept him safe from errant sticks and pucks zipping through the air at 100 mph.

His reluctance was not unusual. For reasons ranging from discomfort to impaired visibility to a pervasive but mostly whispered feeling that protective visors are unmanly, a vast majority of NHL players do not wear them.

The NHL has given no indication that it is prepared to enact a mandatory-visor rule and, despite research indicating their value, only 32% of NHL players are wearing visors this season, according to a Hockey News poll conducted in November. Daniel Briere of the Coyotes said peer pressure keeps many players from wearing visors. Some who wear them, he told the Arizona Republic, are ridiculed.

“It’s a macho thing,” former NHL player Pat Verbeek explained. “When you boil down to it, it’s a manly thing not to wear one.”

Although, he added, “I’ve always gone under the theory that I’d rather finish the game and still have two eyes. I don’t care about my teeth. They can put those back in. They can’t put your eyes back in.”

Similar thoughts probably ran through Smolinski’s mind after his eye was damaged in late December. Maybe he thought of Bryan Berard, then of the Toronto Maple Leafs, whose career was nearly ended and his right eye nearly lost when he was high-sticked by Marian Hossa of the Ottawa Senators three years ago. Berard returned to the NHL after sitting out the 2000-01 season, but even though he wears a special contact lens he has only limited vision in his injured eye.

Smolinski eventually agreed to add a visor, but only after Howard Lazerson, the Kings’ longtime ophthalmologist, enlisted the influence of Smolinski’s insistent wife, Julie.

Lazerson said that, in his 27 years working with the Kings, the club has averaged two eye injuries a season, ranging from abrasions to detached retinas. Extrapolated over a 30-team league, that’s about 60 eye injuries each season.

Last month, the East Coast Hockey League voted unanimously to make visors mandatory starting next season, making it the first professional league with such a requirement. Full facial cages have been mandated for NCAA players since 1979, and Canadian junior players are required to wear visors.

The NHL Players’ Assn. would oppose such legislation.

“It’s a personal choice,” said union President Trevor Linden of the Vancouver Canucks, who does not wear a visor despite having sat out five games in December after he was raked in the face and poked in the eye by a teammate’s stick. “I think it is important that guys get educated and understand how important this can be, but at the end of the day, it’s still a personal decision.”

Several top players wear eye shields, among them Sergei Fedorov of the Detroit Red Wings and Peter Forsberg of the Colorado Avalanche. Ray Bourque, one of the NHL’s all-time great defensemen, wore a visor for much of his career.

And a lot more players would wear them, Lazerson believes, if the doctor had been able to convince former King Wayne Gretzky to wear one.

“If he had put it on ... “ Lazerson said, “the next day 70% of the other players would have been wearing one.”

Smolinski’s brief encounter with Abid could have ended his career. But he suffered only a corneal laceration, which was repaired through surgery, and returned to the lineup last month having missed 11 games.

“He’s lucky,” said Robert K. Maloney, a refractive surgeon who repaired Smolinski’s injury at his Maloney Vision Institute in Westwood. “I believe he’s going to turn out just fine.”

Neither King Coach Andy Murray nor Smolinski’s teammates could have known that, however, when Murray approached his captains not long after the accident and asked if they’d be willing to wear visors, at least in practice.

They said no.

“I’m not really surprised,” Murray said. “Look at how many years the guys played without helmets. And goalies used to play without masks. It’s a tough breed.”

Smolinski said playing without a visor served as sort of a rite of passage into the NHL from the amateur ranks, where players have no choice.

Since he started wearing one, he has had few complaints.

“It’s given me a little security,” he said. “I don’t want to say too much security because you still never know what’s going to happen. But I’ve got good visibility. The only drawback is the sweat dripping onto it. You’ve got to dry it off every time you come on and off the ice.”

After sustaining such a serious injury, Smolinski said, “You just come to a realization that, maybe I should put one on, and you go from there.

“But,” he added, “there might be a point where I’ll take it off.”