DUSTBIN

Sporting News, The, Oct 30, 2000

November 1,1959

After too many pucks to the face, Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante didn't care whether anyone thought he was soft. He was putting on a mask.

A Rangers shot left Plante with another row of stitches, and he returned to the ice at Madison Square Garden wearing a facemask he had crafted and tested in practice.

Plante wasn't the first to don a mask--Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons had tried it briefly during the 1929-30 season--but he was the first to wear the protective gear regularly. Soon it became standard equipment. As for that night in 1959, the Canadiens won. And Plante went on to win his fifth straight Vezina Trophy.