Letting Cool Heads Prevail

Hockey Masks Offer Goalies a Canvas as Well as Safety

In the seconds after Simeon Varlamov made an amazing save during a hockey playoff game this week, the scoreboard at Verizon Center showed a close-up profile of the Washington Capitals' star goalie, back heaving as he bent over trying to catch his breath and a big Hershey Bears logo on his maroon mask.

Seen from one side, it looks like Varlamov plays for the minor league team even as he snares puck after puck in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The other half of his mask is painted the more familiar bright Caps red, with the team's eagle logo.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the goalie mask. And in one of the quirkier traditions in professional sports, where most uniforms are controlled and trademarked to the tiniest detail, hockey goalies can paint anything they want on their masks. That means anything, scary to sentimental to silly, from alligators to Garth Brooks to flaming skulls.

"You don't see anyone painting their football helmet, and Major League Baseball would never let you get away with this," said Jim Hynes, who wrote a book about goalie masks. It happened by chance, but "it's a happy marketing thing for pro hockey, anyway. It's a conversation piece, and fans seem to have an attraction to it."

For all the new hockey fans in the area, measured in sold-out season tickets and soaring TV ratings, the masks are one of the quickest ways to get a sense of the team's personality. When Olaf "Olie the Goalie" Kolzig played for Washington last year, fans could immediately see he's a strong supporter of autism research and, from the monster on his mask, that he's nicknamed Godzilla.

In Varlamov's case, his mask lets no one forget that he was expected to be sitting on the bench rather than generating international media attention with his performance against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

"We love it!" said Diane Knight, a fan from Pennsylvania. "We love that he still keeps his feet in Hershey. But we hope eventually it's all Caps."

In the beginning, there were no rules because there were no masks. Goalies -- who face 100-mph slap shots -- didn't wear masks designed for hockey until 1959.

The first guy to do it, Jacques Plante of the Montreal Canadiens, was laughed at. "They called him a chicken," Hynes said.

"He was the only smart guy," said Eddie Johnston, a senior adviser to the Penguins and, as a Boston Bruin, one of the last NHL goalies to play without a mask. His nose was broken six or seven times before a puck smashed into his head, and he spent six weeks in a coma. Then-goalie "Glenn Hall came to see me in the hospital, and he put a mask on the next day," he said. When he recovered, Johnston wore one, too.

In the 1960s, after a puck hit him in the mask, a trainer for Bruins goalie Gary Cheevers drew stitch marks where the gash would have been. After every hit to the face, he added a few more.

A designer began to add logos and team colors. Then a goalie for the New York Rangers asked for a lion. "He thought he'd distract the shooters," Hynes said. "After that," Hynes said, "anything went."