Ryan Reaves, who played with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2017-18, is just one of four NHLers still not wearing a visor this season.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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