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    Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask
    Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask
    Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask
    Ebook254 pages2 hours

    Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask

    By Jim Hynes, Gary Smith and Gerry Cheevers

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    About this ebook

    Who was the first goaltender to wear a mask in a game? Who was the last to go without one? When did goalies start painting their masks?

    These are just a few of the questions that are answered in this definitive book on goalie masks. Saving Face looks at the development of the mask from its earliest days as a rudimentary face-saving device to its current high-tech design, bullet-proof construction, and cutting-edge artwork.

    The book offers a visual journey, too. More than 150 historic and modern photos, including thirty-plus full-page shots of some of the most famous masks ever created, support a text that weaves the tale of the mask’s development.

    Based on extensive archival research and exclusive interviews, Saving Face tells the story of the goalies behind the mask and their fight for the right to wear one. It also looks at the talented mask makers, artisans, and artists behind hockey’s modern masterpieces. This updated edition includes masks worn by some of the most exciting stars in the game today.

    While goaltenders the world over owe a debt of thanks to those who created, developed, championed, and continuously improved the mask, hockey fans everywhere are thankful, too. For the mask today has gone far beyond its original functionsaving faceto become the most intriguing piece of equipment in sports.

    Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sportsbooks about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.

    Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSports Publishing
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9781613218624
    Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask

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      Book preview

      Saving Face - Jim Hynes

      Cover Page of Saving FaceHalf Title of Saving Face

      For my brother Mike, who brought me to hockey games back when masks had eyeholes . . . and for Jason and Sam, the next generation of Hynes hockey fanatics.

      – J.H.

      This book is dedicated to my children Julie, Sean and Ryan, who have grown up surrounded by goalie masks, but who have never once expressed an interest in standing in front of a slapshot.

      – G.S.

      Title Page of Saving Face

      Copyright © 2015 by Griffintown Media, Inc.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sports Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

      Sports Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sports Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or sportspubbooks@skyhorsepublishing.com.

      Sports Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

      Visit our website at www.sportspubbooks.com.

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

      Production Credits

      Concept and Design: Griffintown Media (www.griffintown.com)

      Jim McRae, President

      Judy Coffin, Senior Designer/Project Coordinator

      Philippe Arnoldi, Book Designer

      Cover photos (see Picture Credits, page 173)

      ISBN: 978-1-61321-829-7

      Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61321-862-4

      Printed in China

      Contents

      Foreword by Gerry Cheevers

      Introduction

      CHAPTER ONE

      The Innovators

      CHAPTER TWO

      The Golden Age

      CHAPTER THREE

      Paint Jobs and Metal Bars

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The Freedom of Expression

      Index

      Picture Credits

      Acknowledgments

      Foreword

      HOW I SAVED MY OWN FACE

      If you believe the people who care about these things, it seems that I am regarded as some sort of goalie mask pioneer. Well, that may be true, but I certainly didn’t set out to be. In fact, I avoided wearing a mask as long as I could.

      In a way, I guess I do qualify as some sort of authority on masks, because I played with one—and without one—in the NHL. My first two NHL games were with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first was against the Chicago Blackhawks and Bobby Hull, who had the hardest shot in hockey at that time. And there was little ol’ me, 21 years old and no mask. We won somehow and I played again the next night in Detroit. I’ll never forget it: Gordie Howe came down the wing and wristed what I figured was a routine shot. Well, that routine shot knocked the stick out of my hand.

      Even though it took me a few years and a few near misses to go out and get one, I finally realized that if I wanted to play in the NHL I would need to wear a mask. My first mask was made by Lefty Wilson, the trainer for the Detroit Red Wings. I didn’t like it much—it moved around like crazy. About a year later, a guy named Ernie Higgins came around the Bruins’ dressing room. He had figured out a way of anchoring a mask to your chin so it wouldn’t move. His mask was better than any other I had tried, but it still made it hard to see pucks at your feet. So even though it drove old Ernie crazy, I cut the mask’s eyeholes even bigger. I ended up wearing an Ernie Higgins mask for the rest of my career.

      I guess what I am really famous for are the stitch marks I used to put on my mask every time I got a puck in the face. Without those, my old Ernie Higgins mask wouldn’t be so well-known. It started as a bit of a joke, and you can read all about it on the pages inside, but I guess that was the start of mask art. And that is something else you can read all about in this story about the art and history of the goalie mask.

      I hope you enjoy it.

      GERRY CHEEVERS

      Boston, Massachusetts

      Although separated by millennia, it’s not difficult to see the form of a goalie’s mask in this mesolithic mask, c. 7,000 BCE.

      Introduction

      MASK APPEAL

      Throughout history, humans have worn masks of all types and for different reasons. Cultures in just about every part of the world have used masks in rituals, ceremonies and celebrations. There were masks for war, masks for the hunt, masks to ward off evil spirits or to call upon friendly ones. There were even masks for entertainment, like those worn by ancient Greek and Japanese theater actors.

      In some cases, masks are considered important works of art. In fact, one of the world’s oldest masks, the 5,500-year-old Lady of Warka, is known as the Sumerian Mona Lisa. An eight-inch-high marble sculpture of a woman’s head, the priceless work is one of the first sculpted depictions of the human face.

      To a large degree, though, masks have served needs more utilitarian than artistic over the centuries, whether providing disguise or for administering torture (iron masks). Some, purposely hideous, were intended to gain advantage by frightening the wearer’s enemies.

      Mask design has spanned ages and cultures, including the 5,500-year-old Lady of Warka mask and a West Coast Aboriginal mask (above, left). Masks are most commonly used for protection, including the Japanese kendo mask, the Greek soldier’s mask and the goalie mask (above, right), from the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

      The mask of the hockey goaltender wasn’t made to look good, although many modern ones certainly do. And it wasn’t meant to scare anyone, although the first ones probably did. It had a strictly practical purpose: protection. It was made to shield the face of that most tortured and tormented of athletes, the hockey goalie, from the speeding pucks, sharp skates and slashing sticks of his opponents and, occasionally, albeit accidentally, his own teammates.

      GAME FACE

      Unintentionally, the first goalie masks, as rudimentary in form and construction as they were, have become as compelling as the famous masks of art and war that preceded them . . . to hockey fans anyway.

      As mask design and, indeed, art, advanced over the years, the goalie mask would begin to take on a mystique of its own, often transcending the sport for which it was created. A plain white one made by American Ernest C. Higgins, better known as Ernie Higgins, can be found at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Canadian mask maker Greg Harrison had his work featured in a 1981 exhibition by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, called Soultenders and Goaltenders, which presented goalie masks alongside West Coast Aboriginal masks.

      Still, it is the hockey fan who is most enamored of the goalie mask, both for the role it has played in the history of the game and for the story of its development—one of the most intriguing in all of hockey lore. The goalie mask has become not just another piece of protection, but the most recognizable and personalized piece of equipment in all of sport.

      Until now, however, even though hundreds of hockey books have been written—a good number of them about goalies—no book has been dedicated to the goalie’s other face—his saving face. Here is the story of the goalie mask.

      Nicknamed Praying Benny for his habit of dropping to the ice to make a save, goalie Clint Benedict wore this crude leather and wire mask in a 1930 NHL game after a Howie Morenz shot broke his nose and cheekbone earlier that season.

      Chapter One

      THE INNOVATORS

      The slapshot and curved sticks were still decades away, but by 1930 injuries to goaltenders were nevertheless a growing concern . . . to goaltenders, if to no one else. Clint Benedict, an eventual Hall of Fame goalie and four-time Stanley Cup champion, had only himself to blame for this. The strapping, wily veteran had earned the nickname Praying Benny in the early years of the 20th century by spending much of the game on his knees to stop pucks from getting past him, even though it was illegal in the NHL at that time for goalies to drop to the ice to make a save. Benedict would simply argue that he had fallen by accident, and he would usually avoid the two-minute penalty the infraction carried. Finally, in 1918, NHL president Frank Calder, driven to distraction at seeing his referees unable to distinguish between a real or fake Benedict tumble, eliminated the rule prohibiting goalies from dropping to the ice. Netminders were now free to spend as much time as they wanted lying down on the job, closer to the ever-present dangers lurking there.

      The earliest hockey games featured netless goals and maskless tenders who played mainly upright between two pegs.

      Between the time of its tentative first steps in the late 19th century and the birth of the National Hockey League in 1917, the game of hockey changed significantly. Equipment improved, players grew more skilled, and rules were changed to make the game faster and more dynamic. Positions, and the way they were played, changed too. Defensemen, for example, never strayed from their end of the rink during hockey’s formative years. Meanwhile, the position of rover (a free-roaming skill player) was eliminated altogether by the early 1920s.

      Goaltenders were not immune to change. Some goalies liked to wander more than others, skating out of their crease to clear away pucks. But for the most part, goalies stayed put in front of their net. One thing is for sure though: even after equipment developments such as protective leg pads and catching gloves were added around the turn of the 20th century, goalies played the game standing up. In many leagues, the rules of the game actually prohibited them from dropping to the ice.

      In those days, the puck rarely left the ice. Players’ sticks were heavy and rigid, with thick, straight blades. Lifting the puck was uncommon, not an important part of the game—and difficult to achieve intentionally, too. For the most part, shots

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