Celebrating 50 Years of the Goalie Mask

NHL fans are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the introduction of goaltender masks.  On November 1, 1959 the New York Rangers were hosting the Montreal Canadiens at the Madison Square Garden.

Rangers forward, Andy Bathgate, was pretty irritable with Habs netminder, Jacques Plante, who, he says, rubbed it in when the Rangers were beaten at home.  He also was a bit upset about an altercation with the goalie that almost left Bathgate in the hospital.

image: TSN

“The puck was dumped in and it wasn’t a hard shot,” Batgate recalled.  “I thought I could beat him to the puck but all this was happening in split seconds. And Jacques came out the right side and he saw that I was coming, I was right on him, and he turned around and saw me and he gave me a poke-check and I went head first into the boards. I wasn’t prepared for that and my head was right straight-on, and I got it turned enough that I cut my ear and I cut my face a little bit. What he did to me was not called for. I thought: “How do you show him, ‘Hey, big boy, you got to even things up here. You want to play that game?  I had better straighten it out.’”

“I came down the left wing, and Jacques used to sort of sit with his ass in the net and his head sticking out, ready to go across,” Bathgate continued. “I just gave him a fairly good wrist shot. I was trying to hit him somewhere where he would remember me and, boom, I nailed him. It wasn’t a hard shot. If I had really wanted to shoot it hard, I could have broken his jaw, but he bled good.”

Plante suffered a broken nose, needed stitches and was pretty banged up but he didn’t want to miss the rest of the game.  He had been experimenting with a homemade mask and asked if he could wear it onto the ice.  The coach (Toe Blake) was pissed and didn’t want him to wear it but he had no choice since there wasn’t a backup.  He made Plante promise to get rid of the mask when his face healed up.

“He had to go to his own dressing room and then all of a sudden he came out with this mask on,” recalled Bathgate. “And we all looked at each other and said, ‘What is this?’”

Unbelievably, the Canadiens supported their newly masked goaltender and ended up winning the game 3-1.  I’m guessing the positive experience was enough that the Habs goalie continued wearing it and his peers decided to copy.

It’s great to look at how such an important part of the game was introduced.  I can’t imagine hockey without the goalie mask and what would the world be like without masked (fictional) serial killer, Jason Voorhees?