This Day in Hockey History (Goalie Plante Becomes NHL’s 1st Masked Marvel)

Nov. 1, 1959—So badly cut up by a shot on goal that time needed to be called so the ice rink at Madison Square Garden could be cleansed of his blood, Jacques Plante re-entered the game with a piece of equipment he’d only used so far in practice: a goalie mask.

But braving onlookers’ gasps and stares (including that of coach Toe Blake), the goaltender stopped 29 of 30 shots, leading the Montreal Canadiens to a 3-1 victory over the New York Rangers—and becoming the first National Hockey League goalie to wear a mask on a regular basis.

It’s too bad that hockey isn’t as much of an obsession in the United States as it is in Canada or elsewhere in the world: otherwise, someone would have dramatized this key moment in sports history. Plante’s innovation might not have happened at all, or been copied by others, except that athletes were willing to defy the macho conventions of the time to promote greater player safety.

Plante’s move came after a backhanded blast from Rangers right wing Andy Bathgate landed beneath his nose in the first few minutes of the game. With blood spurting from his lip and nose, Plante was helped off the ice and into the dressing room, where seven stitches were applied to close the wound.

With stars like Bathgate, Bobby Hull, and Tim Horton shooting the puck from only five to 10 feet away, goalies were accustomed to hearing coaches say, “Use your head”—i.e., block the shot with that.

By the time of the Rangers game, Plante had endured more than his share of injuries to the head: more than 200 stitches to his face, a broken nose (four times), and a fractured cheek and jawbone.

Deciding that something had to change, he reached for a mask molded to his facial contours in the offseason by a fiberglass salesman named Bill Birchmore. It featured a rubber lining around the forehead, held in place by elastic straps that attached to the top and to either side of the mask.

Blake had tolerated Plante wearing the mask in practice, but like other coaches of the time, he saw no use for it in a game. It would limit the goalie’s peripheral vision, he believed, and worse than that, it was simply cowardly. He told Plante not to wear it.

The goalie stood his ground: He would not go back on the ice without it—and, since backup goalies were still not common then, Blake had to accede, however reluctantly, to his demand.

After facing down the Rangers, the Canadiens went on a 10-0-1 tear with the masked Plante. As if proving the goalie’s claim for the effectiveness of his new safety equipment, the streak ended only when he temporarily gave in to Blake’s request that he do without the mask.

Plante would play the remaining two-thirds of his Hockey Hall of Fame career with the mask, winning three of his seven Vezina Trophies as the best goalie in the NHL during this period. The next goalie to wear a mask, Don Simmons of the Boston Bruins, did so six weeks later, and, together with Plante, would constitute the first masked goalies to face each other a month after that.

The next goalie of consequence to follow their lead, Terry Sawchuk, used a mask described by author Bruce McDougall as “a bedpan with eyeholes.” But it worked.

The last game featuring a goalie without a mask, Andy Brown, took place on Dec. 31, 1974.