Jeff Libby usually removes his right eye before he goes swimming. Otherwise, he may never see it again.
“As I get older, my skin gets a little looser, so if I move my head real fast, it’ll fly out,” the former Islanders defenseman said of his prosthetic. “This happened a couple times. I was at a lake, and I forgot to take my eye out by the dock. Fortunately, the water was only four or five feet deep. After about an hour of diving, I ended up finding it. It happened another time in a pool. That was much easier to find.
“When it’s not in, all you see is like a red ball.”
Libby, 49, hardly remembers what life was like with two functioning eyes. It has been over 25 years since one was removed, since an errant skate blade ended his playing career, leaving him as one of only two players in history to have recorded only one NHL shift.
