Serious injuries to noteworthy players brought the topic of visors in the NHL to the forefront of hockey conversation over the last few years. The NHL mandated visors, but allowed players with at least 25 games of experience to decide whether or not they want to don a visor.
So, how have things panned out after the recent stream of horrifying facial injuries? More players are wearing visors, but the numbers vary greatly depending on the age and nationality of the skater.
As seen over on The Hockey News, visor usage is a fascinating topic which has plenty of notable patterns. Their study encompassed players on active NHL rosters as of November 13th, but excluded those which were mandated by the NHL to wear a visor. From that, they found 88.4% of European NHL skaters wear a visor. That’s the highest visor-usage percentage, as only 75.7% of American skaters and 68.6% of Canadian players wore visors. If you’re wondering, Swedes topped the list with 90.5% wearing visors.
The study showed that age is also a factor. Excluding those mandated to wear visors, a total of 90.6% of players under 24 wore the additional protection. That’s a stark contrast to the percentage of veterans over the age of 34 with visors (62.8%).
Wonder which team has the highest percentage of visor users? That’d be the New Jersey Devils (91%). The lowest? Columbus and Philadelphia at 70%.
Here’s the full list of NHL visor usage:
NJ – 91%
CAR – 90%
NYR – 90%
NSH – 89%
NYI – 87%
EDM – 86%
MIN – 86%
MTL – 86%
LA – 85%
SJ – 82%
TB – 82%
PIT – 82%
COL – 81%
DAL – 81%
DET – 80%
PHX – 80%
BUF – 79%
ANA – 78%
BOS – 78%
OTT – 78%
FLA – 77%
VAN – 76%
WSH – 76%
TOR – 75%
WPG – 75%
CHI – 73%
STL – 73%
CGY – 71%
PHI – 70%
CBJ – 70%
You can see the rest of the study here along with a rather handy chart showing the growth of visor usage in the NHL over the years.