No. 20: Bones
Gary Bromley isn’t a man known for being subtle. Clearly. Somewhere in his life people gave him the nickname “Bones,” and he took that as a challenge. “If you’re going to call me Bones, I might as well wear a mask that both reflects that and gives everyone nightmares,” he muttered while hiding beneath somebody’s bed.
He passed with flying colors.
Bones was mainly his nickname due to a smaller build. He was only 160 pounds. By today’s NHL standards, that’s pretty light. We have to imagine, though, that was just an excuse for this man to wear something both ridiculous and insanely terrifying. Either Bromley found that thing at a Halloween store on the cheap and plain refused to take it off or, judging by the entire uniform, he was going for the “monk on a revenge spree” look.
Bones wasn’t the first to wear this type of cage. Warren Skorodenski claims to have done it before him by a couple of years. But that doesn’t make us sleep any better.
He also uh, wasn’t very good. Bromley only played for six seasons in the NHL, never posting a goals against average under 3.00. He moved around to the WHA a few times as well. Guess he wanted to test out his horror skills in other markets. What likely happened is that many opposing teams began using the ol’ “shoot as fast as you can to get the hell away from that thing” strategy, which unfortunately plummeted his save percentage. Yeah, that’s what happened.