Breaking: Star defenseman nearly loses his eye after visor explodes at World Championship.

One of the National Hockey League best defensemen had an incredibly scary incident at the World Championship on Friday, coming incredibly close to badly damaging his eye.

As you can see from the image above, the visor of Tampa Bay Lightning star defenseman Victor Hedman exploded after Hedman attempted to deliver an awkward hit but came out on the losing end of it.

The visor exploded, and produced a deep gash just millimeters away from the eye of Hedman. While the injury likely doesn't feel very good, Hedman has to consider himself incredibly fortunate to not have damaged his eye, any closer and he may have lost it entirely. 

Here's a video of the hit that led to the injury.

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Here are some close up images of the damage from Swedish website AftonBladet.