Happy 50th, Goalie Mask

I found the Clint Benedict photo interesting because goalies used to wear hats or baseball caps on the ice. I always thought that was kind of funny.

 

Wore that Plante-type mask when I started playing, liked John Davidson's best:



I play with a helmet and mask combo now, like Osgood, but you can still get the old school masks, if you dare.

 

You'd be nuts to wear one of those old school ones, even in a beer league.

 

My MAN!

Then there was the famous quote, "My face IS my mask." By this guy:

 

They mentioned the anniversary last night on TSN SportsCentre while recapping the Rangers-Bruins game and I was appalled.

First, they said it had been a first for a goalie mask in the NHL, which simply isn't true. I don't give a shit if Clint Benedict is a footnote in history, he still wore a mask in the NHL before Jacques Plante did.

Second, Andy Bathgate was shown being introduced at Madison Square Garden and the TSN brainiacs mentioned that it was in that very building where Plante had debuted his mask. Apparently they don't know the current Madison Square Garden didn't open until 1968 and is several blocks away from where the Rangers and Canadiens were playing in 1959.

As an aside, yes, Andy Bathgate has admitted to hitting Plante in the face with his shot on purpose. It's not well known (or, at least, I didn't know this), but Bathgate was actually paying Plante back for another dangerous incident that had happened earlier in the game. This passage is from a CP story a couple of days ago:

On that autumn night in New York, Plante had come out of his crease and, while poke-checking Bathgate, tripped him head first into the end boards, causing the Rangers' franchise player to go for several stitches.

When Bathgate returned to the game, he was still fuming at what he considered a dirty play by Plante and, when he got the chance, with the goalie's head sticking out of a crowd in front of the net, drilled him in the face with a shot at 3:06 of the first period.

Bathgate has been somewhat apologetic about it in recent interviews, but when he spoke to Denault, he made no bones about getting even.

"It was actually a wrist shot," Bathgate told the author. "It wasn't a hard shot but I tried to give him the same as me and I guess I caught him. It was a shot with feeling in it. It wasn't a blast, and I wasn't trying to score because the angle was really bad, but his head was sticking out and I decided if he wanted to play those games. . ."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gvJuBL2U2xhtHSxRJGE3-aaU9KKg

 

Plante designed his own mask and from the moment Bathgate's backhand ( some reports claime it was a backhand, not a wrist shot) hit his face, the position of goaltending changed forever.

Tehnically, yeah, Clint B was the first goalie to put on facial protection but if you really want to get anal, it wasn't a "goalie mask". It was some leather thingee that covered his nose and cheekbones. And, depending on whose accounts you read, he wore it for one, two or five games.

 

My first mask was so thin I could snap it easily. Crazy.

I think this is interesting:

Queen's University (Kingston, ON) netminder Elizabeth Graham is credited with being the first goaltender to ever wear a mask for protection. The historic event took place in 1927, three years before NHLer Clint Benedict strapped on his leather mask. As reported in the Montreal Daily Star at the time, Graham "gave the fans a surprise when she stepped into the nets and then donned a fencing mask." Myth has it that Elizabeth's father pressured her into wearing the mask after she underwent extensive dental work.

http://www.hhof.com/html/wmspla03.shtml

Frank Farrell wore this is the 1932 Winter Olympics:

 

Gump was certainly an athletic-looking man.

 

I think this one had some design issues

 

He still wore facial protection almost 30 years before Plante did. My point is that while Plante's mask certainly opened the door and kept it open, the TSN idiots shouldn't be claiming Plante was the first one ever, because he wasn't.

It'd be like saying, well, Willie O'Ree really wasn't the first black player in the NHL, because he was only there for a handful of games.

Actually, a good comparison is the old horseshit about how six goals in a game was the "modern" NHL record, set in 1944 by Syd Howe and later tied by Red Berenson and Darryl Sittler. They don't say this any more, but they used to. Seven goals in a game, of course, is the record, set in 1920 by Joe Malone.

 

I never once heard of anyone suffering an eye injury back in the day, except for Parent, and that was a freak accident.

I'll add that the modern cat's eye cage won't stop a stick, either, and I recently switched to a grid cage.

 

Well, Willy O'Ree isn't a comparable at all. That's a black and white situation compared to the goalie mask discussion

You're right...TSN was wrong in saying that Plante wasn't the first goalie to wear a mask.

That said, there wasn't a rush for goalies to wear masks after Clint donned his. It took Plante three decades later to make the impact on the position.

Here's a comparable.

Everyone blames the Red Sox's loss in Game Six on Buckner. Nope, the fault lies squarely on Calvin Schiraldi who came in with two out and couldn't get the third Met retired.

No one cares about Clint or Calvin because they don't fit the easy storyline.