Can you believe the gear we wore back then? It's a wonder we weren't maimed for life. Well, some actually were.
This was the era of the out of control unlimited curved sticks and the mammoth increased speed slap shots. Many were just adjusting to the masks that Plante innovated. They soon had to be altered as the fit to your face mask became as dangerous as playing without one as the puck smashed the mask into your face and spread the damage around.
The equipment you see today began as a means of self defense. As Mike Palmateer said in a book on goalies, I have nightmares about actually being killed with a shot. That's why he played with such reckless unabandoned concern for his well being. He said he was probably going to die anyways so why worry about it? These guys today wouldn't even consider playing in a full set of that gear.
Look at Chico's arms. Is he actually wearing pads? Yup, probably the best available. Brown made the best in my opinion. The chest protector was like a thin version of a baseball catcher's. they were separate pieces. Nothing closely resembling the one piece kevlar body armor they wear today.
The leg pads are half the width and much shorter than the featherweight mattresses worn today. They were also leather stuffed with horsehair and/or deer hair. They soaked up water and became heavier than Hell. The stuffing had to be ramped up several times during a full season. There weren't the carefully constructed pads down the insides of the legs like today. Shots to the inside of the legs usually met with a sock covered leg. The bruises on a goalie's body back then ranged from the shoulders to the feet and everywhere in between. John Davidson used to go the whirlpool bath after a game and fill it with cold water and lots of ice and just sit there in the tub numbing up the contusions.
Look how small his gloves are. The trapper is merely a 1st baseman's glove with a leather wrist cuff lined with hard plastic. The blockers surface was plastic that eventually curved way out of shape giving the keeper less surface to block shots. The thumb was highly susceptible to injury. Amazing bruises going halfway up the arm were very common as those wrist cuffs just didn't do the job. The palm of the trapper was merely leather just like a baseball glove. Trying to perfect catching all the shots in the webbing became impossible as the shots got harder, faster, and curved, rose, and dropped with the action the pucks got from the newly innovated sticks. Bruises on the palms and especially the ball of the thumb had to be numbed in order to play pain free.
There are several reasons why so many historically real good goalies had poor GAAs. The equipment was #1. The move from heavier wood sticks to light fiber glass sticks with out of control banana blades turned shots form guys like Bobby Hull into nightmare blurs that exploded upon contact. Heavy wet leather doesn't slide across the crease like hydrophobic synthetic leather and nylon stuffed with dense closed-cell foams and plastic, which incidentally seem weightless in comparison. Forget that crap about the good old days! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
It was still fun and I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I wouldn't mind having suffered a lot less discomfort and at times outright pain.
I suppose we could offer Jack + Nico…but MTL fans might want a little more.
