{"id":89892,"date":"2025-06-25T00:03:20","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T00:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/89892\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T00:03:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T00:03:20","slug":"matt-martin-retires-leaving-the-nhl-with-just-a-few-visor-less-players-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/89892\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Martin retires, leaving the NHL with just a few visor-less players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Martin announced his retirement Tuesday after 16 NHL seasons, all but two with the New York Islanders, a departure that leaves the league with only a few players who take the ice without a visor.<\/p>\n

Martin was one of just five holdovers in the league who played without a visor on his helmet. His move to the front office as special assistant to Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche<\/a> makes Ryan O\u2019Reilly, Jamie Benn, Zach Bogosian and Ryan Reaves the only visor-less players remaining.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association agreed in 2013 to mandate visors<\/a> for newcomers, grandfathering them like helmets were decades earlier.<\/p>\n

Asked about it in November 2023, Martin figured it would be a major adjustment to put a visor back on, especially given how much of his job on the ice was fighting. He played his final of 1,075 regular-season and playoff games without one on April 17.<\/p>\n

“If they mandated it, I would\u2019ve wore it,” Martin told The Associated Press at the time. \u201cI took it off because of the role I play, and at the time, everybody that played that role didn\u2019t wear it. I got used to that, so I never changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craig MacTavish, who played until 1997, was the NHL’s last helmetless player. Martin called Benn and O’Reilly \u201cthe odds-on favorites\u201d to be the last without a visor.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matt Martin announced his retirement Tuesday after 16 NHL seasons, all but two with the New York Islanders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,3733,3950,159,4,17221,3671,7590,17222,3703],"class_list":{"0":"post-89892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-jamie-benn","10":"tag-matt-martin","11":"tag-new-york-islanders","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-nhl-players-association","14":"tag-ryan-oreilly","15":"tag-ryan-reaves","16":"tag-visor","17":"tag-zach-bogosian"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/114741077870113497","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}