Jacques Plante

Jacques Plante Page 7

by Raymond Plante

  Blake realized full well that he would be creating a precedent, but in the circumstances, he had no choice. He shrugged his shoulders and snarled, “All right, Jacques, you can wear it this time if you want.”

  The coach was still ruminating over the problem when Jacques got up and unsteadily crossed the ice to the visitors’ dressing room. He had miraculously resuscitated. The fans gave him a thunderous ovation while the organ played “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”

  A few minutes later, with a bandage covering his wound and his sweater still stained with blood, Jacques Piante donned his protective mask for the remainder of the game. No, he hadn’t got the day mixed up with Halloween: he knew perfectly well where he was and what he was doing. Thus, the fans in Madison Square Garden that night were treated to the sight of a masked phantom appearing on the ice: it was the first time that a goaltender wore a mask in the modem version of the game of hockey.

  The mask: for the past two years, Jacques Piante had been its most ardent defender. For two years, he had tried to convince the hockey brass of the absolute necessity of wearing it in a sport that was getting faster every year. That evening at Madison Square Garden, in the most populous city in the NHL, Jacques had an all-important point to make. With his critics ready to pounce on him, he had to show, beyond any doubt or argument, that wearing the facemask did not take anything away from a goaltender’s performance – that, on the contrary, wearing it could only improve a goalie’s skill by giving him more confidence to practise his art.

  The mask. The subject was continually rehashed on radio and television, kindling a mounting interest in it. People remembered that Gerry McNeil had ended his career prematurely because his fear of injury had made him too nervous during games. Terry Sawchuk of the Bruins had stopped playing in mid-season that year, claiming that he was “eating much too much rubber.” The mask: it all came back down to the mask.

  Goaltending has always been the most dangerous position in hockey, but just a few years before, there were only one or two players per team who had mastered the art of the slapshot. In a short interval, the quantity of these deadly shots had multiplied and the chances of a goalie being injured had sharply increased. Young forwards like Bobby Hull could fire shots that reached a speed over 160 kilometres an hour. Even if the goaltender was not hit directly by one of these zingers, a ricochet could be almost as dangerous. One can imagine the impact of a puck travelling at 175 kilometres an hour hitting a goalie’s bare face.

  Before he wore the mask for the first time in regular season play on that first of November, Jacques himself had received more than two hundred stitches to his face. His nose had been broken four times; his cheekbones and jawbones had also been fractured. Several of these injuries had been inflicted by teammates during practices. In 1954, a shot by Habs left-winger Bert Olmstead had shattered Jacques’ cheekbone and had kept him off the ice for five weeks. The year after that, his left cheekbone and his nose were fractured by a shot by teammate Don Marshall, deflected by the massive Butch Bouchard.

  A thoughtful fan had sent Jacques, anonymously, a protective plastic mask that covered his face from forehead to chin. Jacques had begun using it regularly during practices, even though his range of vision was not a hundred percent complete. During one session, he had foregone the mask and had received a puck between the eyes; after that, he had worn it unfailingly during practices. It had become accepted to wear this additional protection during practice sessions, but not in the games.

  On top of having to prove his point to his coach, Jacques’ innovative gesture had brought him a hail of criticism from other sources. Several opponents of the use of protective headgear were outspoken in belittling him – of course, almost none of them had ever had to stand between the goal posts while being exposed to shots by well-trained athletes at the peak of their form. Jacques ran the gamut of remarks of all kinds. The typical criticism reflected the entrenched attitudes of diehard conservatives. Rationalizations abounded, for example:

  “It gets too hot under the mask and the sweat runs into the goalie’s eyes.”

  “The visibility isn’t good enough: Piante can’t see when the puck is near his feet.”

  “The mask is too heavy: it strains his neck muscles and makes his head move more slowly.”

  A few of the comments were valid. Jacques himself had acknowledged that the masks he had worn during practice sessions weren’t perfect. However, a few of the hockey pundits used more puerile excuses for banning the mask from regular games.

  “The goaltenders in our club will never wear a mask,” pronounced Muzz Patrick of the Rangers, “because female hockey fans like to see the players’ faces!”

  Another type of comment reflected a macho attitude in sports: “A real man wouldn’t hide his face from the opponents.”

  Some coaches, including Toe Blake, thought that if a goaltender wore a mask all the time, he would feel overconfident and this might diminish his concentration. It would be easier to outplay a goalie who had lost that extra alertness brought on by fear, which kept him on his guard at all times. This was an argument that weighed more than the others. Whenever someone would ask him about the mask, Blake would chaw on his cigar with a sour expression on his face – he was especially sensitive to the controversy because it had been Jacques, his own goalie, who had provoked it.

  This was why Blake had been so reluctant to give in to Jacques on that November evening in New York. Grumbling as he tilted his fedora even further back on his head, he knew that he had not heard the last of the matter.

  If, that first time, the Rangers had gone on to score five or six goals, Blake would have used all his powers of persuasion to prohibit the use of the facemask. However, in spite of an injury that might have turned the game into a rout for the Canadiens, things turned out quite differently.

  The masked man in the bloodstained uniform took his position in the goal mouth. Not only was he determined to protect his team’s net with his usual skill, but he also had something to prove. He no longer accepted that his duty as goaltender included the risk of being blinded or disfigured.

  Jacques made several saves as soon as the shots started coming at him. His teammates, gaining confidence, went all out to sway the odds in the Canadiens’ favour. Dickie Moore scored his fourth goal of the season on a rebound from a shot by the Rocket. André Pronovost marked the second goal for the Habs by flipping the puck into the corner of the net on his own rebound. Finally, Bernie Geoffrion scored his seventh of the season, outplaying Lorne “Gump” Worsley with a pass from behind the net that bounced off John Hanna’s skate into the net.

  In the third period, the beefy Rangers goaltender managed to block shots by all four Canadiens who broke away from the defence to take unimpeded shots on him. Jacques remained solid as the match wore on. Rangers fans had to wait until the middle of the third period when Camille Henry, a terror near the net, caught the rebound from a slapshot by Andy Bathgate and sent it over Jacques Piante, who was stretched out on the ice.

  The final score: Canadiens 3, Rangers 1. Jacques was mobbed by his teammates. Toe Blake was the first to congratulate him for his brilliant feat, and the Habs continued on the road to glory. The mask had entered the game of hockey once and for all.

  Of course, winning a battle did not mean the war was over. But after that first game, Jacques had complete confidence in his mask. He knew that it was efficacious and essential. Besides, since he had first tried the prototype during practices, the product had been refined and perfected. The improved version was now made of fibreglass instead of the originai plastic.

  This latest technological improvement to the piece of protective equipment was the work of another hockey fan. Bill Burchmore was head of sales and promotion at the Montreal branch of Fiberglas Canada Ltd. He was crazy about hockey and was an uncon
ditional Habs man. He had been a goaltender, then a forward, and eventually became a coach, teaching hockey basics to kids between the ages of eight and ten. One of his protégés had became a professional and was on Jacques Piante’s team: none other than Dickie “Digger” Moore.

  Burchmore had attended a 1958 playoff game between Montreal and Boston, during which the puck had hit Jacques in the face. He had immediately written to Jacques, telling him that he had been working on a concept for an original mask and was now ready to develop the product. He knew, from his own experience, that for a goalie to accept wearing a mask, it had to have three essential characteristics: it had to be light, it had to be unbreakable, and it had to press close against the face to allow for maximum peripheral vision. Burchmore carne up with the concept of a fibreglass mask. This new material, which had not yet been fully exploited, seemed to fit the bill: it was strong, light, and, most importantly, it was easily moulded.

  Jacques had found the idea interesting, but at the time, he was still doubtful about the material’s effectiveness. He waited a year before agreeing to lend himself to Burchmore’s experiment. It was only in the summer of 1959 that Jacques went to the Montreal General Hospital, encouraged by the Canadiens’ physician, Dr. Ian Milne, and the team physiotherapist, Bill Head. Under Dr. Milne’s supervision, a mould of Jacques’ face was taken.

  Bill Burchmore got to work. His first effort was a fibreglass mask baked in an oven and saturated with polyester resin. Rubber strips lined the inside to absorb any shocks to the forehead, cheekbones, and jaw. The final product was only three millimetres thick, but was as resistant as steel.

  Jacques tried it out during the next practice session and found that it fulfilled its purpose perfectly. However, his coach was still not convinced: making changes when things were going well had never been his style.

  “It’s not a bad idea, Jacques,” Toe Blake told him. “But I’d advise you to use it only during practices. If you start the season wearing a mask and you let in a few shots that looked easy to stop, the fans are going to hassle you and blame the mask.”

  Jacques had accepted this reasoning, which was precisely why he had not been wearing the mask on November 1st. But that night, he could no longer hold himself back – just as he couldn’t suppress the business instinct that lurked inside him. As soon as he saw how well the mask worked, he went into partnership with Burchmore to be the exclusive makers of it. No manufacturer could have believed more in a product than Jacques Piante did: he was staking his professional reputation on it.

  It always takes an amazing amount of stubborn courage to change the prevailing customs in professional sports. It took a large dose of conviction and exceptional strength of character to wear a mask in pro hockey, when only one other player in the NHL – Charlie Burns, an American player for the Detroit Red Wings – had worn a helmet during games, making him look like an extraterrestrial in the eyes of the fans and the other players. Jacques had to face a barrage of taunts. People said that he looked like a ghost and that he should paint the mask that must have come straight out of a Hollywood horror flick. This was unfair: it was only later that film directors created monsters who looked like they were wearing hockey masks!

  Jacques continued to wear the mask amidst the slurs and ridicule; in any case, he was playing so well that no one could justifiably reproach him for it. The Canadiens chalked up 11 wins in a row, fought 18 games without a defeat, finished in first place in the League standings, and won the Stanley Cup in only 8 playoff games – with 4 wins over the Black Hawks, who had the season’s scoring champion, Bobby Hull, on the team. Jacques even posted two shutouts in the semi-finals against the Hawks before giving the Habs 4 wins against Toronto in the finals. The verdict on Jacques’ performance during the series: terrific! Three shutouts, and an unimaginably low goals-against average of 1.38! No hockey goaltender had ever achieved such a record.

  The protective mask remained a hot topic among hockey commentators and fans, but now they gave it a more positive slant. Jacques had succeeded in shutting the critics’ mouths. League president Clarence Campbell even stated, “Sending a man into the nets without a mask is the equivalent of sending him to the gallows!”

  The Canadiens brought home their fifth Stanley Cup in a row – another record – while Jacques Piante, the masked goaltender, wrote another page of hockey history by winning his fifth Vézina Trophy in five years, all of which was satisfactorily conclusive.

  Montrealers became accustomed to lining up on St. Catherine Street in April, on one of the first warm days of the year, to acclaim their heroes who rode down the Street in luxury convertibles. Canadiens fans, while never tiring of the taste of victory, began to feel that the famous Stanley Cup parade was a permanent feature of their lives.

  8

  On Top, and Back Down Again

  It all seemed too easy. With the victories and honours piling up, there was the danger of acquiring the illusion of invincibility. From his debut in the NHL until the 1960–1961 season, Jacques had accumulated the best results of any goaltender in National League history. Only Terry Sawchuk had maintained a lower goals-against average after six complete seasons of play, and only Bill Durnan had won five Vézina trophies within six years. But neither Durnan nor Vézina had played so often on a team of Stanley Cup winners. The trophies, titles, and records all clearly showed that Jacques Piante was a champion.

  But what Jacques had accomplished in his career went beyond the statistics: in six years, he had radically transformed the art of hockey goaltending. He had introduced a highly individual new style and gained acceptance for it, to the extent that his counterparts on other teams had begun to imitate him. More importantly, he had initiated a different way of practising and of viewing the profession.

  Jacques Plante created a new goaltending style that the fans adored.

  Like anyone who carries out a revolution in their field, Jacques had his detractors, vehement naysayers who refused to admit that the game of hockey could be changing right under their noses – the kind of people who always look for the negative side of any innovation, and worse, who enviously try to put down anyone who might be getting “too big for their boots.” When they can’t support their arguments by concrete facts, they search for personal weaknesses to criticize. These gripers never stand as an identifiable group against which it is possible to defend oneself. They make sporadic forays into the public eye, changing their faces and adding their venomous innuendos to the ebb and flow of rumours – rumours that are discredited when you’re on top, but re-emerge when you slip up. And if Jacques Piante the goaltender possessed undeniably remarkable qualities, Jacques Piante the man was, of course, human, with human foibles, and it was not in his nature to hide them. A solitary bastion against the pucks, he was a public figure who never missed a chance to say what was on his mind.

  Jacques was considered to have a big mouth, which was good in some circumstances and bad in others. On the ice, he sent out a continual stream of comments and instructions, directing and encouraging his teammates. From his position, he had a good view of the whole game, and as he didn’t have to be on the lookout for bodychecks all the time, he could follow the action with closer attention than the other players could.

  A big mouth! … just because he liked to analyse all aspects of the game and was never afraid to express his opinion. Jacques was the most articulate hockey player of his generation. It was undoubtedly his perfectionism that made him the butt of criticism from this time onward. He loved the sport passionately. He lived hockey during all his waking hours and probably even in his sleep, not only because of his desire to excel – the ultimate goal of champions – but also because he wanted to stay actively aware of all the facets of the game. When he returned home or to his hotel room after a match, he ran through all three periods in his mi
nd, like a film reel. With his remarkable memory and powers of concentration, he would relive every goal scored by the opponents, seeking out the error to be corrected – the weak point to overcome, the trap to avoid – any detail he could change to become even better.

  In the dressing room, or on the train that brought the players home to Montreal after a game away, reporters liked to solicit Jacques’ opinion on a particular play, or on a goal that he may have given away in a moment of weakness or distraction. Observant analyst that he was, Jacques would often point out some of his teammates’ errors in his answers. Naturally, this rubbed some of the players the wrong way. None of them liked having their mistakes mentioned out loud, especially by a member of their own team when talking to newspaper reporters! But this was Jacques’ irremediable habit, mainly because he adored to discuss hockey. Whenever a reporter asked him a question, he would immediately launch into a detailed and accurate explanation, pinpointing the exact time and place that an error had occurred, whether due to negligence at centre ice or to a lack of alertness on the part of the defence. Always fair, Jacques would candidly admit to his own errors and lack of judgment. Later, he became an excellent hockey analyst in his occasional newspaper columns. He enjoyed writing and did it well. His verbal comments, however, which inevitably appeared in the next morning’s newspapers, often backfired, particularly when he was misquoted. This happened often, since the reporters were usually in a rush to hand in their copy before their deadline. Misunderstandings would occur, and some of his teammates grumbled that Jacques wrongly blamed them for goals that he let in.

  No matter what the circumstance, Jacques never hesitated to say what was on his mind. He openly displayed his peculiar forthright brand of professionalism and his demanding passion for the game. The inevitable negative reactions added to the pressure that he already faced as a goaltender. Jacques Piante had many friends and admirers, but he also had enemies.

 

‹ Prev Next ›