According to B/R Open Ice, only four current NHL players do not play with a visor.
These skaters are Ryan Reaves (Toronto), Ryan O’Reilly (Nashville), Zach Bogosian (Minnesota), and Jamie Benn (Dallas).
In 2013-14, the NHL changed the rules to make it mandatory for all players to wear a visor. At the time, the rule indicated that anyone with at least 35 games of NHL experience, meaning veterans like Zdeno Chara, Joe Thornton, and Ryan Getzlaf, still had a choice to wear one or not.
Now that several of those future Hall of Famers have retired, the list of NHL players opting not to wear a visor in 2024-25 has dwindled to just four.
Reaves played 58 games with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017-18 before relocating to Vegas and skating in the 2018 Stanley Cup Final. Today, he’s in Toronto with the Maple Leafs and has two years left on his deal.
Benn has been captain of the Dallas Stars since 2013-14 and is on the verge of becoming only the second player to score 1,000 points with the club. He’s in the final season of an eight-year deal he signed in 2016.
Bogosian is one of the two players on this list with a Stanley Cup ring, winning it with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2020. Throughout his career, he’s dressed with five teams, and in the first season of a two-year pact, he signed with the Minnesota Wild.
It is a safe bet that O’Reilly will remain the last player to win the Conn Smythe Trophy without wearing a visor, achieving the feat in 2019. As another veteran player with five clubs on his hockey resume, he’s participating in the second season of a four-year deal with the Nashville Predators.
As many old-time hockey fans remember, Craig MacTavish was the last player to skate in the NHL without a helmet in 1997. Someday, one of these players will be the answer to a trivia question: Who was the last NHL player not to wear a visor?
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