Mask

My poem about the legendary Habs (later, Leaf, Blues even Oiler) goaltender Jacques Plante was as wrong as a poem can be. According to that poem I wrote about 25 years ago, it was in Detroit where Plante was hit in the face by a puck and refused to go back out unless he could wear a mask.

TSN says it happened in New York, 50 years ago yesterday.

Change is not easy in the context of a tradition-bound culture like 50s-era hockey. Plante's free spirit was all about change, however, and the Andy Bathgate wrister Plante took in the face was enough to let the goalie mask in forever (although some goalies played without one as late as the early 70s). "Artist at work" was the tag applied to Plante. I saw him up close from a seat by the face-off circle at Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton in about 1975. He roamed freely, handling the puck as well as any defenceman, shouting instructions to his team-mates the whole time.

Plante's part of the Hillsdale material now. Fifty years ago yesterday, someone in Hillsdale looked west through what soon will be a thick, winter-long ridge of frost (though I suppose the window was tight and new then), maybe picked up the paper and read about Plante's new mask, maybe watched Plante on tv a day or two later, beating the Leafs again.

And the writing about all this will be wrong, will be changed, will be then and now.