Ocular and facial injuries sustained by goaltenders in the National Hockey League: a preventable problem.

Despite mandatory helmets and face masks, professional and amateur goaltenders continue to be at risk for eye and facial injuries. Better understanding of the mechanism of injury would help in optimizing goaltender equipment. The goal of this study was to identify eye and orbital injuries to goaltenders in the National Hockey League (NHL) over the past 5 seasons.Retrospective case series.All NHL goaltenders from the 2014-2015 to 2018-2019 regular seasons.Web-based sports injury web sites were searched to identify eye and facial injuries among goaltenders between the 2013-2014 and 2018-2019 NHL seasons.Five in-game eye, orbital, or facial injuries to NHL goaltenders were retrieved, resulting in an incidence of 4.07 per 10 000 athlete exposures. A total of 5 games were missed due to these injuries, resulting in a lost financial value of $335 937. All goaltenders in the NHL during the study period wore noncertified goaltender masks, and the mechanism of injury was the same in all cases, involving the blade of a player's stick accidentally passing through the gaps in the goaltender's facemask. All included players left the game in which they were injured, and the mean number of games missed was 1 (range 0-2).Despite mandatory facial protection, the use of noncertified masks is inadequate to prevent all facial and eye injuries. Serious consideration should be made to adapt new legislation in professional hockey.