Esposito revisits stories behind mask

MONTREAL -- Tony Esposito's distinctive white mask, nearly a half-century old, is a magnificent mess.

It is scratched and chipped and dented, chunks having been knocked out of it by pucks and the metal bars he installed over the eyes bent by slashing sticks, skates and his own pliers.

Frayed thread dangles from adhesive tape. Fiberglass cloth is exposed at the mouth and nose. Rivets on the forehead rattle loose, and the straps, threaded through a plate he added to protect the back of his skull, are almost limp, having lost much of their elasticity.

This gorgeous piece of hockey history looks like it was used for target practice. Which, during 15 of the goaltender's 16 NHL seasons and some time on the international stage, it pretty much was.

It is the mask that Esposito, 74, wore for all but 13 of his 985 NHL games (including the Stanley Cup Playoffs) from 1968-84, en route to induction into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1988. He cherishes it as a reminder of the game he had come to love as a boy growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

Esposito, who wore this mask with enormous success for the Chicago Black Hawks (then two words) and Team Canada in the landmark 1972 Summit Series, and David Britt, a former Air Canada steward, garage-league goalie and self-professed hockey nut who molded Esposito's face for it in the training room of the Montreal Forum, were on the phone with each other last week, speaking for the first time in almost 50 years.

"Thank you for saving my looks," said Esposito, proud that he never lost a tooth playing hockey.

"And thank you," Britt said, "for making the mask look so good."

Esposito arrived in the NHL with the Montreal Canadiens in late November 1968 as an emergency call-up from Houston of the Central Hockey League. His duffel bag contained his disintegrating brown mask, battered from the action it had seen during much of his college career from 1964-67 at Michigan Tech, the 1967-68 season with the Vancouver Canucks (then of the Western Hockey League) and, most recently, Houston.

Esposito played 13 games with the Canadiens in 1968-69 before being left unprotected in the 1969 intraleague draft and claimed by the Black Hawks. In Chicago, he quickly became one of the NHL's greatest goalies, a pioneer of the butterfly style that became the template for a generation.

In the 1969-70 season, he led the League in victories (38) and shutouts (15); he won the Calder Trophy, given to the NHL's top rookie, and the Vezina Trophy, then awarded to the goalie or goalies whose team allowed the fewest regular-season goals.

Esposito would have all of his success behind an iconic white mask that he has scrupulously cared for and modified to this day. But first, he needed to have his college mask replaced.

Britt, 77, had grown up in Montreal's north end as a good friend of Eddy Palchak, who joined the Canadiens in the late 1960s as an assistant to trainer Larry "Red" Aubut, in time replacing his mentor.

Britt, who had an inventor's curiosity, often was welcomed into the Forum by Palchak. He played in a league with Marc-Andre Beaudin, a plaster sculptor who was developing skill with fiberglass cloth and resins while working for the fledgling goalie mask company founded by Canadiens goaltending legend Jacques Plante.

(Plante popularized the use of the goalie mask in the NHL, wearing one in a game for the first time Nov. 1, 1959, against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden after being badly cut by a shot. It was a crude but functional mask made for him by Fiberglas Canada salesman Bill Burchmore. Other goalies followed suit by adopting facial protection during the 1960s.)

Beaudin thought Britt's contacts through the airline could prove to be of mutual benefit, so it wasn't long before a barrel of plaster of paris arrived at the latter's home, with Beaudin suggesting that he practice making molds.

"I played with it for a while to figure the consistency, the ratio of material to water," Britt said. "It was a complete ad-lib but I did it with a lot of gusto."

He experimented on his own hands with mixed success, then heard from Palchak that Esposito, brand new with the Black Hawks heading into the 1969-70 season, was coming to Montreal for a preseason game with hopes of getting a new mask.

Without ever having molded a goalie's face, Britt lay Esposito down on a table at the Forum, covered his eyes with cotton swabs, inserted straws into the goalie's nose and mouth, slathered petroleum jelly onto his face and troweled on the plaster compound.

"Tony probably figured I worked for Plante's company, not an airline," Britt said with a chuckle. "But Eddy opened doors for me. I told Tony he'd only have to lie still for 20 minutes. There was an ingredient that made the mixture cure, but it got hot on the skin. Well, Tony finally stood up and the mold fell off his face into his hands. It turned out perfectly. They gave me a couple towels, I put the mold in a plastic bag, packed it solidly and sent it to Fibrosport, Plante's company."

Beaudin then built the mask from Britt's mold and had it sent to the Forum, where Esposito picked it up on his next visit with the Black Hawks.

For a couple of years, having invested in Plante's company, Britt molded masks for a handful of other NHL goalies of the day. The face of goaltending changed dramatically in the early 1970s when Fibrosport virtually cornered the market by mass-producing fiberglass masks for commercial sale, with the company still working from molds to make custom models for pros.

Esposito and Britt haven't met since their molding session at the Forum in 1969; indeed, they hadn't spoken again until last week when I called Esposito at his summer home in Wisconsin and handed the phone to Britt in his suburban Montreal living room.

Eavesdropping happily on their conversation was Britt's son, Lee, who, as goaltending custom products manager for Bauer Hockey, services many of the NHL's elite goaltenders with cutting-edge equipment, including masks.

I sat with Esposito in Tampa for a talk in February and he brought along his iconic mask, proudly pulling it from a shopping bag to begin a mapping of its history. He was the perfect tour guide as he ran his fingers over a mask that he says isn't for sale, no matter that he's been offered thousands of dollars for it.

"I added the piece on the back," he said that morning of the scratched and paint-chipped rear plate. "I got whacked a couple times in the back of the head and I fell one time real hard and hit back of my head, so I added that."

Missing now is an extension he wore for a time that fanned up over the forehead, though the rivets are still in place.

"I got zinged in the forehead a few times, so that would deflect the puck," Esposito said.

He said he cheated by filing the eyeholes larger than Beaudin had made them, which resulted in near catastrophic puck and stick strikes. Esposito points out a chunk of the mask missing at the top of the left eyehole, knocked out by a shot from Canadiens forward Guy Lafleur.

That and other vulcanized rubber missiles prompted him to get out his hacksaw in 1976 and fashion a cage that he attached over the eyes and bent with pliers. He always carried a spare cage in his road equipment for emergency repair of the hybrid mask he had developed.

Esposito was the only NHL goalie to blend the fiberglass and cage masks. For a few years, early versions of what today's goalies uniformly wear had quietly been finding favor: a cage bolted onto a conventional plastic helmet in a style that was popularized by Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak.

"But I didn't like them because you had blind spots," Esposito said, explaining why he chose to stick with the Beaudin-Britt model he wore for so long. "Today's mask has great protection, but you don't have the vision down below. And the way mine was made, with fiberglass cloth and resin, made it incredibly durable. It's still very strong today."

Esposito pointed out the exposed fiberglass cloth at the mouth. "That was full force; it wasn't a glancing blow," he said.

"The concussion of the shot would push your bones into your face and cut you. I took a few stitches on an eyebrow, a few in the side of the head, a few on the chin and around the eyes.

"But they were straight cuts, not jagged. When you got cut without a mask, it tore you badly so you had terrible scars. Mine were fine and stitches healed up."

With that, Esposito's grin spread as he cradled the mask that he views as an extension of his hockey life, even a part of his face.

"Plus, I've got that Italian skin," he said with a laugh. "You don't get as many wrinkles as you age."