Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn is the only player in the NHL's conference finals who regularly plays without a visor.
Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn is the only player in the NHL's conference finals who regularly plays without a visor.
Dallas Stars captain Jamie Benn stands out in the NHL’s conference finals.
While every other player on the ice wears a visor, Benn does not. He’s one of the last NHL players who will ever play without one.
Only six NHL players played games this season without a visor: Benn, Ryan O’Reilly, Ryan Reaves, Matt Martin, Zach Bogosian and Milan Lucic. Last year, Jamie Benn’s brother, Jordie Benn, and Zack Kassian also played without a visor but weren’t in the NHL in 2023-24.
It’s only a matter of time before no NHL players will be allowed to play without a visor, but 34-year-old Benn can do so. In fact, more than 100 active NHL players could play without a visor if they wanted to. Joe Pavelski, Evander Kane, Mika Zibanejad and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are just some of the NHL players in the 2023-24 conference finals who are eligible to play without a visor.
If you know the gist of Rule 9.7 already, you’re all set. If you don’t know it or need a refresher, let’s head back to the 2013-14 NHL season.
Beginning that season, any player with fewer than 25 games of NHL experience must wear a visor that ensures adequate eye protection — basically, having it cover your eyes instead of tilting it up high (shoutout to Leo Komarov). As Ian Kennedy noted last season when looking at the last NHL players to not wear a visor, a 2021 scholarly article found a strong decrease in the number of eye injuries in the NHL following the widespread adoption of visors.
Benn had 263 career games played before 2013-14, so he’s unaffected by the rule. But he used to wear one anyway. He sported one in his rookie year, but as he told The Athletic in 2018, he changed his mind, saying he had sweat dripping in his visor whenever he took a faceoff.
He took the most draws among Stars players during the 2023-24 season, winning about 61 percent of them, one of the highest win percentages in the NHL. A visorless helmet probably isn’t the main reason he wins so many of his faceoffs, but if it ain’t broke…
That said, he did have to wear a visor for two games in 2017 after suffering a broken nose from a high stick.
Benn’s been captain of the Stars for 11 seasons, just as long as Rule 9.7 has been in effect. His visor-less vision right now is to lead Dallas to the Stanley Cup, which would be the first time he’s won it.
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