Mike Mottau Reflects Upon Being ‘lucky’ Enough to Survive Eye Injury at BetLM

Mike Mottau Reflects Upon Being ‘lucky’ Enough to Survive Eye Injury

Hockey play­ers can be lucky in plenty of instances. A player can put together a hot streak – par­tic­u­larly dur­ing the play­offs – in which an unusual amount of his shots go in. Goalies might not like it, but some­times they really do get lucky when a puck hits their posts.

It’s hard to believe a player would call him­self lucky after a puck hit him in the eye, though.

That’s the per­spec­tive that New York Islanders defense­man Mike Mot­tau shared on Fri­day, how­ever. Mot­tau took a way­ward Zach Bogosian shot to his right eye dur­ing a scary inci­dent on Nov. 21, 2010, forc­ing him to spend mul­ti­ple nights in an Atlanta hos­pi­tal and end his sea­son in the process.

The impor­tant thing to Mot­tau is that it could have been worse – both for his eye and for his hockey career. He’ll be able to con­tinue play­ing at the NHL level because of how the puck landed, which he explained to Tom Gulitti.

“I was awful lucky and for­tu­nate that it hit the way it hit,” said Mot­tau, who is at Pru­den­tial Cen­ter tonight with the Islanders to face his for­mer team in a pre­sea­son game. “It was rolling and it hit me this way (as if it was stand­ing on edge), so it was above and below. (Oth­er­wise) the rounded edge would have hit my eye instead of being flat and would have squished it.”

There was per­ma­nent dam­age to the eye and he was cut above and below it, but he suf­fered no bro­ken bones and his vision is “intact.”

“The eye is per­ma­nently dilated, but it’s still good enough to play,” the 33-year-old defense­man explained. “The vision is intact, but the light affects it. So, it’s some­thing I’ve had to get used to.”

Because his pupil is dilated, his eye is more sen­si­tive to light. He said it doesn’t not bother him on the ice, though.

When it comes to this injury, it’s all rel­a­tive. Mottau’s for­mer team­mate Colin White also fought through a seri­ous eye injury (which occurred in 2007). Mot­tau explained that while they went through some of the same things, White’s sit­u­a­tion was “much worse.”

Mot­tau admit­ted that he could have avoided that injury if he wore a visor, which he plans on wear­ing vol­un­tar­ily going for­ward. He explained why he didn’t wear one in the NHL after don­ning a full cage dur­ing his NCAA career.

“It was just one of those things where you have the free­dom to do it,” he said. “You’re wear­ing a full cage and you get to take it off. At the time, there weren’t a ton of visors in the league and I don’t know if it’s an ego thing. It’s not like I was a heavy­weight by any means. I just kind of gave me that free­dom of not hav­ing it, being a professional.”

It’s dif­fi­cult to scold NHL play­ers for refus­ing to wear visors, even if it’s some­what infu­ri­at­ing that they take an “It won’t hap­pen to me” stance after see­ing grue­some injuries to the likes of Steve Yzer­man. One imag­ines it is only a mat­ter of time before they become manda­tory, but in the mean time, let’s hope that more play­ers learn their les­son before they take a puck to the eye.

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