Goalie Masks

A goalie mask is one of the last pieces of equipment to make it on the required list. Its story is one of innovation. In January 1916, a goalie for the Montreal Westerns found herself facing her stiffest opposition, the Victorias’ Albertine Lapensé, the hardest shooter in the league. To protect her face, the goalie decided to wear a baseball catcher’s mask. Some eleven years later, in 1927, another woman donned a goalies mask. Elizabeth Graham wore a fencing mask during her 1927 season with the Queen University women’s hockey team based at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It was not until January 7, 1930 that a man put on a goalie mask. His name, Clint Benedict and he wore it for only two games after suffering an injury. One reason Benedict abandoned the old goalie masks was they were impractical. This was to change during the 1930s.

The person most credited with the earliest design is the Montreal Maroons’ Clint Benedict. On January 7, 1930, he donned the first hockey mask. The design called for a leather hockey mask to fit flush against the face. Protection was minimal and the design impractical. Benedict wore his mask for five games.

In 1955 and 1957, Jacques Plante, the famed goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, suffered from one-too-many slapshots. The last straw was Andy Bathgate’s shots on net in November 1, 1959. Plante left the game refusing to return unless he could wear what he had been practicing in - a goalie mask. He wore it. The rest, as they say, is history.

The version Plante donned in 1959 was fiberglass molded to fit Plante’s face. The leather version that year seemed to goalies what it is now, a vintage hockey mask. The introduction of fiberglass made all the difference. Goalies began to experiment in a number of different ways, protective and creative.

In 1972, Vladislav Tretiak of the USSR, introduced a new type of goalie mask into the game. He put on a goalie helmet with a cage design, saying it provided greater protection to the entire head. The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) initially decided to favor Tretiak’s design over the traditional mask facemask. They altered their stance when Dave Dryden combined a fiberglass mask and a partial cage design.

Goalies began to become creative or expressive in the 1970s. Goalies began to make each mask a personal custom goalie mask. They started with painted masks. The credit for initiating this early phase of goalie mask painting goes to John “Frosty” Forristall, trainer for the Boston Bruins. He started painting Gerry Cheever’s Mask with stitches – one for every time the mask protected him from facial damage. In1972, Frank Lewis, the Philadelphia Flyer’s trainer, took it one step further. He painted Doug Favell’s mask a bright pumpkin orange as part of a Halloween joke. Favell added white lines to create a new goalie mask design. A new phase of goalie mask designs had begun, one both the goalies and the fans have accepted. Furthermore, in the NHL goalie masks are not denied this ultimate expression of a goalie’s character. Ken Dryden painted a bull’s eye in his Montreal Canadien colors of blue white and red. In this way, a Boston Bruins goalie mask in black and gold or an Atlanta hurricane’s goalie mask is personalized or customized.

Goalie masks now sport decals. They are decorated in various ways using different techniques. One goalie mask airbrush painting displays a Gargoyle, King Kong, another mask a panther or a raptor. As for the companies that make them – they, too, have matured. There are now NXI goalie masks, CCM goalie masks, Vaughn goalie masks. Tour, Nike-Bauer, Easton and Itech also have goalie lines. What they offer are not vintage goalie masks but someday they could be.