25 most bizarre goalie masks in NHL history

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Portrait of Canadian ice hockey player Jacques Plante, goalkeeper for the Montreal Canadiens, 1959. (Photo by George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) /

No. 24: Jacques Plante

Before we had Hannibal Lecter, there was this guy. We’d kill to see him in today’s game, undoubtedly muttering “Hello, Patrice,” every time he went up against the Bruins’ Bergeron.

Plante is credited as the first goalie in the NHL to regularly wear a mask. Let’s examine that last sentence. The NHL began in 1917. Plante became the first one to wear a “whack me in the eyeballs all you want” guard full-time in 1959.

That means it took just over 40 years for players to realize they should do something to keep themselves alive long enough to reach supper. But they stopped short of going all the way. I mean, safety meetings are so boring, am I right? As you can tell from the photograph, Plante had no intentions of covering his head completely. Maybe he figured that lush hair was enough to stop a speeding bullet?

We’re just going to assume that his main focus was to nurture the mug, brain be damned. Although it would be an odd choice, as hockey players aren’t generally born with the genetics of a Fabio to start with. And unlike Cheevers, Plante wasn’t so lucky in the “just try and hurt me” department. /

He played most of his career with the Montreal Canadiens, and it was pretty stellar. Five times he posted a goals against average under 2.00, probably because he was stopping everything with his face. He also registered a ton of shutouts after donning the creepy thing, and one could only assume it’s because the other team was too afraid to show up.

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