First Goaltender To Wear A Mask – Dale’s Daily Data [VIDEO]

Hard to believe, but there was a time when NHL goaltenders didn’t wear masks or helmets. Incredible when you think of the speed of the game and how badly you can get hurt if you get hit by a puck. But that’s the way it was until Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante became the first to wear a full facemask.

He’d been practicing with a white fiberglass mask all season, but Canadiens head coach Toe Blake wouldn’t allow him to wear it in games. But that all changed during a game against the New York Rangers. Three minutes into the game Plante got hit in the face with a puck that split his lip open from the corner of his mouth up to his nostril. There was blood everywhere. He was gone for 20 minutes while he was getting stitched up, but when he returned he had his mask. The coach had a fit, but Plante stood his ground. He said "If I don’t wear the mask, I’m not playing."

Up to that point he broke his nose four times, he had a broken jaw, two broken cheekbones and almost 200 stitches in his head and said "he didn’t care how the mask looked." And the truth is that Plante was such a good goalie that it almost didn’t matter what he did. He won the Vezina Trophy, the NHL award for top goaltender, seven years in a row. He was the NHL MVP in 1962. He was named to the All-Star Team seven times, and his team won six Stanley Cups.

A goaltender wearing a face mask in a game? Unheard of until this date, November 1st, 1959.

Meanwhile there's word Anaheim Ducks goaltender Jonas Hiller is wearing a new mask during the month of November.  Normally he wears a plain black mask, but this month he's wearing a white mask featuring pictures of his teammates with mustaches and other facial hair drawn on them.  It's in observance of what's called Movember.  During the month of November men are urged to grow mustaches and other facial hair to call attention to prostate cancer and other cancers that affect men.