page_title: Jacques Plante
section_title: Goalie mask
hierarchical_section_title: Jacques Plante / Playing career / Montreal Canadiens / Goalie mask
caption_attribution_description: English: The original Mask of Jacques Plante in the Hockey Hall of Fame
context_page_description: Joseph Jacques Omer Plante was a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender. During a career lasting from 1947 to 1975, he was considered to be one of the most important innovators in hockey. He played for the Montreal Canadiens from 1953 to 1963; during his tenure, the team won the Stanley Cup six times, including five consecutive wins. In 2017 Plante was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players" in history.
  Plante retired in 1965 but was persuaded to return to the National Hockey League to play for the expansion St. Louis Blues in 1968. He was later traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1970 and to the Boston Bruins in 1973. He joined the World Hockey Association as coach and general manager for the Quebec Nordiques in 1973–74. He then played goal for the Edmonton Oilers in 1974–75, ending his professional career with that team.
  Plante was the first NHL goaltender to wear a goaltender mask in regulation play on a regular basis. He developed and tested many versions of the mask with the assistance of other experts.
context_section_description: During the 1959–60 season, Plante wore a goaltender mask for the first time in a regular season game. Although Plante had used his mask in practice since 1956 after missing 13 games because of a sinusitis operation, head coach Toe Blake was afraid it would impair his vision and would not permit him to wear it during regulation play. However, on November 1, 1959, Plante's nose was broken when he was hit by a shot fired by Andy Bathgate three minutes into a game against the New York Rangers, and he was taken to the dressing room for stitches. When he returned, he was wearing the crude home-made goaltender mask that he had been using in practices. Blake was livid, but he had no other goaltender to call upon and Plante refused to return to the goal unless he wore the mask. Blake agreed on the condition that Plante discard the mask when the cut healed. The Canadiens won the game 3–1. During the following days Plante refused to discard the mask, and as the Canadiens continued to win, Blake was less vocal about it. The unbeaten streak stretched to 18 games. Plante did not wear the mask, at Blake's request, against Detroit on March 8, 1960; the Canadiens lost 3–0, and the mask returned for good the next night. That year the Canadiens won their fifth straight Stanley Cup, which was Plante's last.
  Plante subsequently designed his own and other goaltenders' masks. He was not the first NHL goaltender known to wear a face mask. Montreal Maroons' Clint Benedict wore a crude leather version in 1930 to protect a broken nose, but Plante introduced the mask as everyday equipment, and it is now mandatory equipment for goaltenders.
caption: Plante's original fibreglass mask
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image DateTime": "2009:02:14 10:51:03", "Image ExifOffset": "2142", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4360", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "2071", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "8B6D3FF98DF54460AD4DFD498D7184CD", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}