Back in the fifties of the last century, almost all hockey goalkeepers went out on the ice without hiding their faces. They didn't have masks. It's hard to believe, but it's a fact. The history of the appearance of the mask in hockey ammunition and its further evolution is really very interesting.
First experiments with masks
The first documented case of a masked goalkeeper on the ice dates back to 1927. It was a match between women's varsity teams and the goalkeeper who dared to hide his face was, of course, also a woman - Elizabeth Graham. It is interesting that she donned the mask (by the way, it was a fencing mask) not of her own free will. Her father made her do it. He recently spent a lot of money on his daughter's teeth and didn't want to be knocked out with a puck or a club during a match. Alas, Graham did not make a career in hockey. After graduating from university, she stopped doing this sport.
In the 1929/1930 NHL season, Montreal Maroons goalkeeper Clint Benedict played several matches in a leather mask with a massive nose, but in the end he turned it down.
It is also known that at the 1936 Winter Olympics, the goalkeeper of the Japanese team Teiji Honma went on the ice wearing a baseball mask. But so he wanted to protect not his face, but his glasses (he was short-sighted and he had to wear them). In any case, this innovation did not help his team - they lost all their matches.
It is easy to explain why all these masks never caught on. First, they weren't hockey. And secondly, they reduced the vision and worsened the goalkeeper's peripheral vision.
Another attempt to protect the faces of the goalkeepers was made in 1954. Then one Canadian craftsman provided six NHL clubs with visor masks made of durable transparent material for testing. However, they quickly fogged up, and the goalkeepers, having tried them in training, decided that it was better to do without them.
The history of Jacques Plant and the first mask in the USSR
Masks only gradually entered hockey life only after 1959. And the Montreal Canadiens goalkeeper Jacques Plant, one of the best goalkeepers in the National Hockey League of all time, contributed to this.
On November 1, 1959, during the next game of the NHL championship, the puck hit Jacques Plant in the face, severely injuring his nose and causing severe pain. The game was stopped, and Plant went to the dressing room for the doctors to put him in order. In the locker room, he told team coach Blake that he would not return to the ice without the mask he had already used in training (this fiberglass and rubber mask was once made and presented by one of his fans to Plant). Blake was against it, but Plant insisted on it. Montreal had no spare goalkeeper, and the coach had to agree to Plant's terms. At first, Jacques was laughed at, called a coward, but eventually they began to follow his example.
The last NHL game in which the goalkeeper played without a mask was on April 7, 1974. We are talking in this case about the goalkeeper of the Pittsburgh Penguins Andy Brown. He remained true to his principles to the end.
As for the Soviet Union, the goalkeeper of the Resurrection Chemist Anatoly Ragulin began to wear a mask before everyone else (in 1962). Circumstances forced him to do this: before Ragulin there was a danger of complete loss of vision due to the next hit of the puck. The mask for him, by the way, was made from an old steel bust by a certain familiar rocket engine specialist.
Further evolution of goalkeeper masks and helmets
Legendary goalkeeper Vadislav Tretiak also contributed to the improvement of the goalkeeper mask. In 1972, during the legendary USSR-Canada super series, Tretyak entered the ice arena wearing a hockey helmet with an arched protective grill located in front. A few years later, Dave Dryden refined the find of the Soviet goalkeeper - he removed those elements that covered his face from his own plastic mask and replaced them with a metal mesh. So the goalkeeper's helmet has actually acquired a modern look. It is in these helmets that all professional goalkeepers play today.
It should be added that for a long time the masks were monochromatic - brown or white. In the mid-sixties, Boston Bruins goalkeeper Jerry Chivers introduced a new fashion. During the season, Chivers used a felt-tip pen to mark the puck and stick marks on the mask, and soon there was no empty space left on it. But at the same time, she became very unusual and interesting.
Since then, painting masks has become commonplace. Today you can see goalkeeper masks with bright and unusual color combinations, depicting formidable animals, skulls, stars, cartoon characters, movie characters, etc.
