Celebrating 50 Years Of The Goalie Mask
This Sunday the NHL will honor the goalie mask. It was Fifty years ago Monday at Madison Square Garden in New York, Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens changed the face of hockey forever. This was not lost on us budding Blues fans when Plante was traded to the Blues in 1968.


We played a lot of street and pond hockey after the Blues came to town and Billy C. was our goalie. One day we decided he needed a better kewler mask than the plain old white Cooper mask Billy had. All the local goalies had the plain Cooper mask, we'd be the first with a Plante Bird mask in our neighborhood. The problem was a new official Plante Bird mask went for as much as a pair of new CCM Tacks skates at Giesler Jorgen Sporting Goods, which back then was well over $100 big ones.

"How hard could it be to make a mask?", we asked ourselves, it was just some fiberglass and a mold? We'd done paper mache' heads in school so this would be a snap.
We got some fiberglass, some wire window screen mesh and some resin and took a face mold off Billy's face. We used aluminum foil to keep the Plaster of Paris mold from sticking to his face. We poured the resin onto the fiber and screen and VOILA!! Instant mask, just like Plante's.We drilled a bunch of ventilation holes and added a headstrap and some stick on cushion pad on the inside. Then it was off to test it out. Hell, we even painted it Pattonville Green with a Blues' Note for good luck.

At first Billy started to wobble in goal as we lined up on Mark's back porch to put the prototype to the test. We weren't sure what the problem was.
Bad vision out of the eyeholes?
Were his glasses fogging up with poor ventilation?
Nope, the resin fumes had made him see starz and he was higher than a kite it appeared. No worries, we were almost done, just a couple shots and we'd have our answer.
Mark could whistle a puck high around the ears like the pros so he took the first shot. The mask exploded like a grenade and Billy tipped over like a freshly cut pine tree. We thought we had killed our poor goalie so we drug him into the garage so Mark's mom wouldn't see all the blood pouring out of his forehead.
After reviving Billy we assured him it was a minor setback and we'd have a new version ready in no time. Billy said no thanks and bought the Plante Bird mask from Giesler Jorgen the next week. We all chipped in since we felt so bad about all the fiberglass embedded in his head and eyes.
The rest is history they say as others went on to steal our thunder as future mask makers.
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9 comments
Comments
Heh....
I had a mask made for Xmas one year (1974 when I figured out Bernie Parent was the coolest thing on skates.) It was white, with two Flyer decals on either side. I loved that mask, especially when somebody nailed me in the face with a floor hockey stick after I stoned him on a breakaway.
Where is it today? Probably not decomposing in some garbage dump in Philadelphia… Filed under “Things that Mom threw out when I went to college and she thought I’d outgrown.”’ Then the birdcage came into vogue (Billy Smith, Islanders was the guy who broke that ground in the NHL after figuring out that it didn’t seem to bother Vladislav Tretiak’s GAA.)
by The Goalie Guy on Oct 31, 2009 12:27 AM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Parent and Cheevers' masks were the shit too
Bernie had it going on with his bird mask but how could you explain putting Flyers logos on yours? ’74 was the peak of the Blues wars with Philly. All of STL wanted to burn and pillage that city back then.
There was one major design flaw to the bird mask we found out later. Plante designed the sharp angle of the leading edge of the mask to deflect the pucks better but when you got conked head on with a flush one it knocked the goalie the fuck out. It wasn’t long until Billy was splayed out on Creve Couer Lake one winter day. We thought he we just tired and needed a break but nope, he was Q gomer for the rest of the day.
Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints
by spectr17 on Oct 31, 2009 3:31 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
i believe the blue note shop has replicas of
both plante and hall and 3 or 4 others in a case somewhere. waaay to expensive but yea from something pretty simple to becoming so good baseball cathers had to swap over. plante should be getting a cut of it all :)
A strong anvil fears no hammer
by Childhood Trauma on Oct 31, 2009 4:55 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Actually Plante ripped another guy's work.
Hamilton trainer and track coach Gene Long
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/hockey/nhl/2009-10-29-history-of-the-goalie-mask_N.htm
Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints
by spectr17 on Oct 31, 2009 5:06 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
You’re just pissing in everyone’s Cheerios today, aren’t you?
/Thanks, Mr. Know-it-All

Let's go Blues!!!
by Milo. on Oct 31, 2009 6:48 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
It's the ED
the whizzer is on the fritz
Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints
by spectr17 on Oct 31, 2009 6:52 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Have you tried getting
two bathtubs in your back yard?
Let's go Blues!!!
by Milo. on Oct 31, 2009 9:39 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
When I was a Young Goaler...
…I used a Winn-Well “cage” that didn’t have a helmet attached to it! I wore glasses (no contacts in the late 1960’s for this kid!), so I couldn’t wear the then-standard face mask.
As a 40-year-Old Goaler, I got one of the modern skull-protecting masks. MUCH better protection!
For what it’s worth, Clint Benedict tried this mask back in the day:

He didn’t like it, because it “blocked” his vision… so goalies went mask-less until 50 years ago today!
"In this game, don't nobody know nuthin' about nuthin'." -- attributed to Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra
by The Ol Goaler on Nov 1, 2009 9:09 AM CST reply actions 0 recs
The Winn Well mask
you got a pic? How did it attach to your head?
That leather masks looks masochistic
Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints
by spectr17 on Nov 2, 2009 8:46 PM CST up reply actions 0 recs

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