Plante First Goalie to Wear a Mask. In the first half of the 20th century, by stoic and somewhat gruesome tradition, ice hockey goalies went out on the ice with their heads and faces unprotected from the damage that could be wreaked by flying pucks. This tradition ended in 1959, as related in the following account. . Plante Becomes the First Goalie to Wear a Mask For a half century, National Hockey League (NHL) goalies had unanimously rejected the idea of wearing a mask during games. Their scars, missing teeth, and assorted disfigurements served as everlasting badges of their courage. Hockey was not a game for the faint of heart. Spilled blood came with the territory. In the minds of most players, coaches, and especially fans, preventing injuries almost defeated the purpose of the game. If stopping a hunk of frozen, vulcanized rubber traveling up to 160 km/h (100 mph) required the use of one's face, then so be it. Anything to the contrary represented cowardice. No one could ever accuse Jacques Plante of being a coward. During the first six years of Plante's NHL career, speeding pucks broke his nose four times, cracked both of his cheekbones, and even carved a hairline fracture into his skull. All told, his oft-gashed face required some 150 stitches to repair. Plante's style of play--aggressive and showboating as it was--only served to make him a more frequent victim. It also made him the finest goalkeeper of his era. He had won the Vezina Trophy as the NHL's best goaltender four years in a row, tying the all-time record. Perhaps only a goalie as skilled and respected as Plante could get away with wearing a mask. When he suffered yet another skin-slashing blow in 1959, he announced to Montreal Canadiens head coach Hector "Toe" Blake that he would not return to the ice unless he could wear a protective mask. The blow to Plante's face went down in the official scorer's book as a save. It went down in the NHL history books as the beginning of an era. Plante had never been one to follow the rules. "Nobody ever taught me how to play," he once told the Saturday Evening Post. "I learned by myself." Against the advice of nearly everyone in the hockey establishment, he often wandered far beyond the goalie's normal position at the mouth of the goal. To him, it only made sense. Why should a teammate be expected to retreat far into his own territory to retrieve a loose puck when Plante could do it himself? Besides, the technique turned a purely defensive player into an offensive weapon--someone who could start an attack that could result in a goal. Drifting up to 60 feet out of the crease--a sight that made Plante's coaches cringe--has since become an integral part of the goalie's job. Not long after he joined the league, Plante learned that he could benefit from some added protection. In 1954, during his first full season, a puck fired by a teammate during practice smashed Plante's right cheekbone. After his nose and right cheekbone were broken during a training session a year later, Plante received a Plexiglas welder's mask from a sympathetic fan. "I don't even remember his name," he told the Post, "but I'll always be thankful to him." From that point on, the mask became standard equipment for Plante during practice. Another fan took an interest in Plante's well-being three years later. During the 1958 Stanley Cup playoffs a puck hit Plante's forehead. "I can still see the blood spurting," Bill Burchmore, a fiberglass salesperson from Montreal, told the Post two years later. The next day Burchmore, himself a former goaltender, told Plante in a letter that he could help. Burchmore got the inspiration for a goalie's mask one day when he glanced across his desk and locked eyes with a sample mannequin his company had made. He made a fiberglass mold of the mannequin's face, and his idea became a reality. About a year later, in August 1959, Burchmore finally persuaded Plante to have a plaster cast taken of his face. The procedure was done at a Montreal hospital under the supervision of two team doctors. The result was a thin, beige-colored piece of fiberglass padded with thin strips of foam rubber at the forehead, cheekbones, and chin. "I didn't really like the mask," Burchmore told the Post. "It was too grotesque." Unsightly as the mask might have been, Plante eagerly began using it during preseason exhibition games. He appreciated that it didn't have the blind spots that plagued the welder's mask. Blake, however, objected because Plante seemed to have trouble seeing the puck when it was at his feet. Privately, Blake worried that his goalie might be suffering from rubberitis--fear of being injured by a hard rubber puck traveling at destructive speeds--a psychological condition that, to varying degrees, afflicts virtually every NHL goaltender at one time or another during his career. This state of fear is also known as rubber shock, which one player described as "the first cousin to shell shock." Those with advanced cases have been known to skate off the ice during the middle of championship games. Perhaps as a test of Plante's emotional state, Blake requested that he not wear the mask during the regular season. Plante complied, although he donned the mask for pregame practice sessions. Early in the season, on November 1, the Canadiens took a seven-game unbeaten streak into a match against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Montreal, already winners of the previous four Stanley Cups, seemed well on their way to a fifth consecutive league crown. The game was scoreless when, eight minutes into the first period, New York right wing Andy Bathgate--the team's hardest shooter--uncorked a backhand from the left side of the net. Plante, his line of sight impeded, didn't have a chance. The rising puck sailed past several players and smacked him flush on the face, sending him to the ice in a heap. Officials stopped the game while Plante was helped to the locker room. There, team doctor Kazuo Yanagisawa used seven stitches to close a 7.5cm (3-in) gash running from the left side of Plante's nose to his upper lip. After assessing the damage in a mirror, Plante turned to Blake and said, "I won't go back on unless I can wear the mask." Lacking a backup goalie, Blake had little choice but to relent. Twenty-five minutes later Plante skated back onto the ice, to the simultaneous amusement and curiosity of the nearly 16,000 on hand at the Garden. Skeptics, Blake included, were quickly silenced. Plante made 24 more saves that game, keeping the Rangers out of the net until midway through the third period. The Canadiens prevailed 3-1, pushing their unbeaten streak to eight games. Cracks and jabs came fast and hard, but Plante deflected them like so many slap shots. "Doesn't your mask prove that you're afraid?" a crowd member in Toronto asked. "If you jumped out of a plane without a parachute," Plante responded, "would that make you brave?" As for those who took issue with Plante's on-ice appearance, his stock answer was, "I don't give a damn how it looks." Blake told Plante he could wear the mask until his face healed, and longer only if his performance didn't suffer. If anything, the mask gave the 31-year-old goalie a boost of confidence. Montreal's unbeaten streak continued for 11 more games--ten wins and one tie. During that stretch Plante recorded his first shutout of the season and surrendered just 13 goals, compared to 18 goals in his previous 12 outings. The streak ended with a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs. Before long, nearly every other goalie in the six-team league sported a mask during games. The sole exception was the Rangers' Lorne "Gump" Worsley, who didn't even use one in practice. "Any guy who wears a mask is scared," Worsley said, echoing the tough-guy criticism directed at baseball players who wore batting helmets. Hockey purists who were looking forward to saying "I told you so" at the end of the season were disappointed. Plante won his NHL-record fifth consecutive Vezina Trophy, edging Glenn Hall of the Chicago Blackhawks on the final day of the season. The Canadiens breezed to their fifth straight Stanley Cup, sweeping their postseason opponents in eight games by a combined score of 29-11 (with three shutouts for Plante). The mask stayed. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
