Wuss

November 1st, 1959. The Canadiens are playing the Rangers at the Garden. Early in the first period, Habs goalie Jacques Plante takes an Andy Bathgate slapshot in the face and has to be helped off the ice, leaving a trail of blood behind him. The wound required seven stitches to close, but Plante returns to the game nevertheless. When he does, he changes hockey forever.

He was wearing a goalie-mask, one of his own invention. It incensed the Canadiens’ legendary coach Toe Blake, who thought, as was the general macho feeling at the time, that masks were for sissies. Evidently Blake and Plante argued about this, but Plante said something to the effect of, "look, my face is all fucked up, I ain't going back out there without my damn mask." Blake didn’t have another goaltender on hand. And so it was.

Montreal went on to win the game, 3-1, and Plante continued to wear the mask. The future of many a future NHL goalie’s dental work probably depended on the fact that Plante got hot during that time and led the Habs on an eighteen-game winning streak, which made everyone forget about his girlie little face-bra. In fact, the mask came to be seen as a good luck charm.

That’s the actual mask he wore over there. Straight up Jason shit. Amazing that there was a time that hockey goalies even thought about standing in there without something on their face. Makes you think about that whole Normandy Beach-storming, steak-eating, chain-smoking generation of badasses and think… man they were stupid.