Plante mask mold finds way to Hockey Hall of Fame

MONTREAL -- Little did Al McKinney know his role in hockey history 60 years ago as he sat motionless in a Montreal office, his eyes covered, straws inserted in his nostrils and a plaster smeared over his face, every pore covered from his hairline to his jaw.

It took the primitive mold a half-hour to harden on McKinney's face, then 60 excruciating minutes to pull it off, a release agent like petroleum jelly not having been first applied. Bill Burchmore, the Fibreglas Canada Ltd. sales and promotion manager who had ladled on the compound, would use the form to make the mask Montreal Canadiens legend Jacques Plante would famously wear in a game on Nov. 1, 1959, forever changing the face of NHL goaltending.
Two months ago, McKinney, now 87, gave the mold to his son, Scott, who with his father's encouragement travelled from British Columbia to Toronto to present it on Feb. 22 to Phil Pritchard, curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame, and Craig Campbell, manager of the shrine's resource center and archives. The mold will be showcased at the Hall in a display charting mask evolution, one that's rich with Plante items.
There will be much more heard about Plante in the days ahead with Carey Price now two wins from passing the late legend's record of 314 regular-season victories with the Montreal Canadiens.
Scott McKinney (center) presents Craig Campbell (left) and Phil Pritchard with the 1959 mold of his father's face.
Plante had been toying with a mask in practice through the 1950s, cutting a broad eye-hole in a plastic shield made by Delbert Louch of St. Mary's, Ontario. Hailed as "the shatterproof face protector for all sports," the Louch shield never caught on, leaving the forehead exposed and fogging up in frosty arenas.
Burchmore was at the Montreal Forum for a Stanley Cup Playoff game in April 1958 when a barefaced Plante was drilled in the forehead by a puck. In the NHL's one-goalie days, the game was delayed 45 minutes while Plante left for repairs.
Returning to his office the next day, Burchmore gazed at the fiberglass mannequin on his desk. He wrote to Plante to tell the goalie he could make him a space-aged mask -- and this almost before the space age.
Plante's initial indifference did nothing to dampen Burchmore's enthusiasm. And it's here that McKinney, then an eager sales trainee with Fiberglas Canada, entered the picture.

Plante models a modified Louch shield mask (left) and one of his game-worn masks as displayed at the Hockey Hall of Fame.
"Bill asked me one day, 'Can you stay after work and give me a hand with a project? I'm doing something for Jacques Plante,' " McKinney recalled during a 2006 visit to his then Montreal-area home. "It didn't faze me at all when he told me I was going to be his model for a face mask."
The molding followed, as did the tortuous removal of it, leaving McKinney's face raw and Plante a step closer to becoming a pioneer. Nowhere in the news stories of the day would McKinney's vital, painful role be mentioned.

"A little scary," he admitted of the molding, no fun for a man who was claustrophobic. "The next day, we came to work as usual -- my face might have been a little red -- and I never saw the ongoing process that created the mask. I probably saw the finished product for the first time on TV."
To convince Plante of the idea, Burchmore needed the McKinney mold and his own skills as a salesman.
"Just about everyone thought I had rocks in my head," the inventor said at the time.

How the Dec. 12, 1959 Montreal Gazette covered Bill Burchmore's invention
Plante's face would later be molded before the 1959-60 season at Montreal General Hospital under medical supervision, a nylon stocking slipped over his head to ease the plaster's removal.
"I designed the mask for protection, not for good looks," Burchmore said in a 1959 Montreal Gazette interview. "It has all of Jacques Plante's facial features. If it was made for (movie star) Clark Gable, it would look like Clark Gable."
Burchmore would next produce a stronger mold of gypsum. From this came the famous "phantom" mask, 3/16ths of an inch thick and weighing 14 ounces, made by layering polyester resin-soaked fiberglass cloth over the mold of Plante's face.
And then Burchmore tested it, striking the mask with a steel ball swinging on a pendulum to simulate the force of a Bernard "Boom Boom" Geoffrion slap shot from 15 feet. He couldn't damage it.
"Jacques was amazed and about as happy as a little boy who'd just been given his first pair of skates," Burchmore said. "But I was happy, too. I had spent $1,500 developing the thing."

Wearing his new mask, Plante in action against the Toronto Maple Leafs a few months into the 1959-60 season. (Hockey Hall of Fame photo)
Plante returned to the Nov. 1, 1959 Madison Square Garden game after having been stitched, his nose and mouth split open by a shot off the stick of New York Rangers forward Andy Bathgate. Without a backup goalie, reluctant Canadiens coach Toe Blake had little choice but to let Plante wear his new mask.
Despite having long said that a masked goalie was one who had lost his nerve, Blake couldn't argue with the results. Plante was brilliant, a 3-1 winner that night, winning 10 and tying one with two shutouts in his first 11 masked games while giving up only 13 goals.
Burchmore would soon develop the "pretzel" mask, using wound yarn of fiberglass instead of solid sheets. It shaved off nearly four ounces and increased comfort with its ventilated design.

Plante with the lighter, better-ventilated "pretzel" mask, in action against the Maple Leafs. (Hockey Hall of Fame photo)
McKinney never met the man whose career, and those of other bare-faced goalies, he changed forever. He skated for the junior Montreal Royals as a teen, suiting up at the Forum against Jean Beliveau, Bernie Geoffrion and Dickie Moore, and once bowled over Canadiens legend Maurice Richard, off the ice.
Having injured his tailbone in a practice, McKinney was asked by a team doctor to bring a urine sample to the Forum the next day for precautionary analysis. The Rocket nearly expired in laughter when the earnest kid, who'd never before been asked for a specimen, arrived from home with a quart milk bottle that he'd filled to the top.
Now, six decades after having played a vital role in hockey history, McKinney - at least a mold of his face - finally meets the late Plante in the Hall of Fame, getting the credit he has long deserved.