Yesterday marked an anniversary of an interesting bit of cultural history. It was exactly 50 years ago, November 1, 1959, that a National Hockey League goaltender started wearing a face mask during games. In those more primitive times of the league’s history, not only did the goalies not wear masks, but the teams only carried one goalie (or “goaler” for the purists). And when he got injured, the game was halted while he went back to the training room to get stitched up or put back together. It was not rare for a game to be at a standstill for a half-hour or more while a netminder was being brought back to life so that he could come back out and face more shots of hard, vulcanized rubber flying their way. If he was physically unable to continue playing, one of the other players would have to strap on the pads, pray and play.
In the ’50′s it was common for goaltenders to wear a makeshift mask for protection during practices, but it was never done during a game. But on that historic night in 1959, the Montreal Canadiens’ Jacques Plante took a wrist shot just below his cheekbone, ripping a gash of flesh that took 12 stitches and 25 minutes to repair. When he came back out on the ice, he was wearing his mask that he had made out of a fiberglass material. His coach had previously told him that he was forbidden to wear it during games, but Plante gave an ultimatum. Either he wore the mask, or he wouldn’t play. With no other option, coach Toe Blake relented and the game was changed forever. Plante won the game 3-1 and went unbeaten for 18 straight games with his mask. Within the next three years, nearly every goalie in the league was wearing a protective mask during the games. The last goalie to play without one was Andy Brown who last played maskless in the 1973-74 season.
Jacques Plante and his history-making mask.
Red Fisher, who was a sportswriter covering that landmark game, wrote a nice retrospective article about the event including an interesting review of what was going on in the locker room at the moment. It’s posted in the Montreal Gazette HERE.
After just a few years, the players began painting their masks. One of the first was painted orange for a Hallowe’en night game. But soon they became more personalized. One of the most famous was that of Boston Bruins goaltender Gerry Cheevers who played in the 1970′s. He took to painting the sutures that he would have received if he wasn’t wearing his mask, showing all the potential scars that he would have endured through life otherwise.
Gerry Cheevers
Mask artwork eventually became legendary in itself, but that’s a big enough topic for another story another time. We have our own masks that we have to check out every day, so let’s get started with that and I’ll go get the coffee started.
