Thousands of Canadian recreational hockey players will soon have to protect their face if they want to hit the ice.
The Adult Safe Hockey League, which operates from British Columbia to Ontario and includes the United States, announced Thursday that it is introducing mandatory facial protection starting Fall 2013.
The rule was implemented following a rash of serious facial injuries. The ASHL said it has seen 15 serious orbital or eye injuries since 2011. In one case, the player, a Vancouver police officer, did not recover his sight.
The league said the reason it has not implemented the rule sooner because it was afraid it would have a negative impact on enrolment numbers and felt more research was needed. It feared the rule would turn off some players who dislike facial protection for a variety of reasons including obstruction of vision, cost, and stigma about masculinity.
“They fog up a lot. They get scratched a lot,” said one player during a pick up hockey game at Canlan Ice Sports in Winnipeg.
“I think it should be up to the individual. If he wants to wear one, he wants to wear one.”
Of the 17 players at this particular afternoon game, eight were wearing a visor.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Mike Cardillo who chooses to wear a visor following a close call last year, “even though (injuries) are not intentional. Accidents do happen.”
An ASHL spokesperson told Global News that of the roughly 75,000 players enrolled in the ASHL, 73% are currently wearing some form of facial protection. That number drops just over half when only counting players in prairie cities (e.g. Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg).
“It really did bother me, even when I played junior, I didn’t like wearing it.” Said Dave Wheeler. Wheeler said he was 18 years old when a puck severely damaged his orbital bone and retina, leaving him blind in his right eye.
“(It was) a split second incident where the puck came up too fast, I wasn’t looking, turned my head and got it right in the eye. Just like what happened to the young Staal brother.”
Wheeler was referring to a March 5th incident in the National Hockey League in a game between the Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers. Rangers defenceman Marc Staal was hit in the face with a slap shot from the Flyers’ Kimmo Timonen. Staal has not played since but is expected to make a full recovery. In response, brothers and NHL teammates Jordan and Eric Staal of the Carolina Hurricanes, pledged to wear visors from that point forward.
Currently, the NHL has no plans to mandate facial protection. But a league that has ‘Safe’ in it’s title now has another rule to emphasize it.
“Given our brand (Adult SAFE Hockey League), we felt that we owed it to our players to provide the safest possible league to play in and we feel that this rule will accomplish that,” said ASHL Corporate Manager Tony Lemire in a statement to Global News.
“We can say ‘oh I don’t need one, it’ll never happen to me’, but it happened to me. And it could happen to anyone else,” said Wheeler.
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