Long before hockey goalies wore birdcage masks to protect their faces, goalies used to wear hard plastic masks, and Dan Bouchard insists he was the first who painted his mask.
Early in his career in the 1970s with the Atlanta Flames, Bouchard came out on the ice with a painted mask that had the team color red splashed across it. The red was painted in the shape of flames.
“I was the first guy,’’ Bouchard said. “But many people don’t realize why I did it. I was in New York for a game and started reading about the psychology of color. I was reading that there was a reason why stop signs were red, and in people’s brain that meant something. So I started to do some testing. I put some red on my mask in practice and noticed players’ eyes were going straight to it and their shots were going high. Then I did the all white mask and noticed that the shots were going low.
“People thought I was eccentric, but it was all about getting an edge. I did the same thing with my pads later in my career.’’
Bouchard started a trend around the NHL, as all the goalies began to paint their masks and even this writer, growing up in Atlanta and playing street hockey during the Flames’ time here, still has his painted hockey mask that was copied after Bouchard.
Actually, Bouchard was not the first in the NHL to paint his mask. The most famous painted mask of all time may have been on the face of Boston Bruins goaltender Gerry Cheevers, who early in his career painted another stitch mark on his white mask whenever he was hit in the mask with a puck.
If you are interested in reading about the history of goalie masks, there are two great books to read. The first is called “Hockey Masks and the Great Goalies Who Wear Them’’ written by Michael M. Cutler. It features several masks by Bouchard. The other is “Saving Face: The Art and History of the Goalie Mask’’ by Jim Hynes and Gary Smith, who wrote, “No piece of goalie equipment is more revered than the mask, which nowadays is more often than not a piece of personalized art work that only adds to our love of goalies. For many it is the face of hockey, quite literally the saving face.’’
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