Jacques Plante occupies a place of choice in not only the Montreal Canadiens' history but also in hockey's history. A native of the province of Quebec, Jake the Snake (not to be confused with Jake the Snake Roberts from WWF fame), played his junior hockey in Montreal with the Royals and the Habs kept tabs on his progress. It's in 1952-1953 that he played his first NHL games featuring in 3 regular season contest and 4 matches in the playoffs including the first two games of the Stanley Cup final against Boston. He won the first match but after he lost the second one, Dick Irwin opted to ride Gerry McNeil in net to finish the playoffs. While Plante did have his name on the cup, the role he played was nothing compared to what he'd do for the club in the coming years.
OK Google, who is credited with the popularization of the ice hockey mask?…https://t.co/1Skb9NKvPM
During the following season in 1953-1954 he was in the crease for 17 regular season match-ups and it's on this day in 1954 that he was called up by the Canadiens for good. By the time the playoffs came around, he was Montreal's number one goaltender but even with his amazing performance, the Canadiens would bow down to the Red Wings in a 7 games final and they would again lose the cup to the Wings the following season (What is it with Habs goalies and the Wings? St-Patrick didn't like them much either). He might have lost two cup finals in a row but the next 5 years would make everyone forget about those as his Habs won Lord Stanley's Cup every year starting in 1955-1956. Plante also claimed the Vezina trophy as the league's best goaltender for each of those years.
It's in the midst of that amazing streak that Plante made his most famous contribution to hockey. Back in those days, goaltenders manned the crease without wearing any head protection, no helmet, no mask. Some, including Plante, did wear a mask in practice but not in game action until November 1, 1959. On that day, the Rangers' Andy Bathgate hit Plante in the face with a slapshot and the netminder wouldn't come back in the game without his mask after being stitched up. Toe Blake wasn't a big fan of the mask but he had no choice since his team didn't have a back-up goalie. Just like that, history was made and many young Canadians would learn all about it in 1991 through the Heritage Minutes featuring this great goaltender:
It should be noted though that the mask wasn't Plante's only contribution to the evolution of hockey. He was also a pioneer when it came to defying shooters by moving forward to give them less space to shoot at. Plante is also seen as one of the first goalie to really communicate with his teammates on the ice to let them know when an icing would be call by raising his arm as well as for coming out of his net to play the puck. To him, staying in the crease and waiting for his defence to collect the puck was a waste of time when he was perfectly capable to fetch it and play it. By the time Martin Brodeur came around, many goalies had handled the puck but each and every one of them was following in Plante's footsteps.
Plante played for the CH until 1963 when he was traded to the Rangers after Canadiens' coach Toe Blake and him had some issues. Blake stated that both could not be back for the 1963-1964 season and the Habs decided to stick with their coach. Plante would retire for the first time in 1965 but only to come back to hockey in 1968 with the St-Louis Blues were he won a 7th Vezina trophy (he shared that one with Glen Hall) and remains to this day the only one to have won it 7 times. He would finally call time on his career at the Oilers training camp in 1975.
In all, Plante has played 837 games in the NHL (the number would have been far greater had he not been plague with health issues such as a recurring knee injury and asthma), gathering 437 wins, 246 losses, 145 ties with a 2.38 goal against average (the save percentage statistic wasn't recorded back then). On top of his Vezina trophy wins and 6 Stanley Cups, he also put his name on the Hart memorial trophy in 1961-1962, quite a feat for a goaltender which wouldn't be replicated until Dominik Hasek captured the trophy in 1997 and 1998, José Théodore did it with the Habs in 2002 and finally in 2015 when Carey Price had his record setting season.
Plante was inducted in the hockey hall of fame in 1978 and the Canadiens raised his number one to the rafters in 1995. To this day, he's still the Canadiens' most successful goaltender with 314 wins (Carey Price will catch him this year but he will have done so in more games and when ties were not possible anymore). He's second in shutouts with 58 (Hainsworth has an insane 75) and will forever remain in memories as one of the greatest goaltenders ever.
Now, in current news, here's what happened today:
- Michael Chaput was put on Waivers;
- The fourth line at practice was made up of Deslauriers-Thompson-Weise making Hudon and Peca the extras;
-Claude Julien confirmed that Paul Byron would not come to Nashville and Tampa Bay with the team, he's hoping for good news when the team returns home;
-Eric Engels cracked me up with this tweet:
On changing stalls, Dale Weise says, “I could be in the bathroom in this rink and I’d be happy to be here.”
-There will be no practice tomorrow morning before flying to Nashville as the mother of all snow storm is forecasted and the team will be leaving earlier than initially planned.
-The number of Habs blog today was definitely under 2.50;
-My dog is rather annoyed that you would think I was a cat person;
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