Unmasked: Martin, Halak among goalies who keep equipment clean

Appearance matters to a lot of goalies in the NHL.

A desire to live up to the "look good, feel good, play good" mantra goes beyond wearing masks with paint jobs that belong in an art gallery, or the customized pad and glove designs that have become increasingly common.
Quirky habits in taking care of that goalie equipment have also crept into the equation.
Few turn the heads of peers and players alike as much as Spencer Martin rubbing Vaseline on his pads every day.
That's right, the Vancouver Canucks goalie applies a healthy coating of Vaseline to the face of his pads -- and until recently, his blocker -- before he goes on the ice.
It isn't a secret sauce designed for performance improvement by altering rebounds or the sliding efficacy of the pads.
For Martin, that added layer of Vaseline is about looking good in his white-colored leg pads.
"It creates a layer so when the puck hits, it leaves a mark but then after I can wipe it off because the puck mark is on the Vaseline instead of the pad," Martin said, "I wish there was more to it, but there's not. I just want to look better."
Martin, who is already well into his second large tub this season, said he picked up the Vaseline trick from Pavel Francouz while playing together in the Colorado Avalanche organization. He skipped the routine for a couple games last week because he has new pads on the way from Bauer.
There has also been some trial and error.
"At first, I put it on my glove which is the dumbest thing ever. Pucks went flying out of there," Martin said. "If you put it on the inside edge of the pad, it sticks so I learned that the hard way, and now I'm pretty much done putting it on my blocker because I was told Ryan Miller used to take off the seams of his blocker here because he needed to be that dialed in and I realized I'm getting pucks hitting blocker then knob (of his stick) because instead gripping and turning it the right way, it's sliding. So that's pretty much done too but the pads, they'll be clean."
Montreal Canadiens goalie Jake Allen laughed when he was told about the Vaseline usage.
"He's a psychopath," Allen said with a smirk.
Except it turns out Allen has an interesting style quirk of his own, one that started with a homemade solution involving automotive paint, and has since forced True, the company that makes his skates, to make it an option for other goalies who wanted the same look.
When Allen got his first set of the popular True one-piece goalie skates in 2017, they only came in all black because of the carbon fiber layers that connected the skate boot to the blade to create the first truly one-piece skate. Gone were the white plastic cowlings and blade holders that used to wrap the bottom of the skate, connecting to the boot on the bottom with rivets.
The improved connection between foot and blade led to widespread NHL adoption but didn't pass the mirror test for Allen in his mostly white pads, so he had the bottom painted white.
"We took them to a car garage in St. Louis and they had to do two coats of white," Allen said. "I got them in 2017 ahead of the Winter Classic and I remember saying, 'I can't wear black skates.' Usually I'm not picky, but it looked terrible. It was at Busch Stadium, and I saw pictures of my gear and I was like, 'That's got to go.' When I looked at myself, I looked awful. It looks good with some guys' colors and gear, but I couldn't do it. I was like, 'I just can't do it.'"
Surprisingly, given skates are largely hidden by the pads that sit atop them, how they look can be contentious for a lot of goalies.
Arizona Coyotes goalie Connor Ingram is one of more than a dozen NHL goalies to switch to Bauer's new ski-boot-inspired Konekt skate this season, but like Andrei Vasilevskiy did last season, his model has been blacked out, with the neon green labels and graphics that draw attention to them removed completely.
"They made them all black because I'm not flashy and wouldn't do the green," Ingram said.
The bottom holder below Ingram's new Konekt skates is white, however. That was a problem for Jaroslav Halak of the New York Rangers because, unlike Allen, he has always worn and preferred an all-black skate. Halak loved the new skate but seriously considered switching out of it because of the holder color, so he had the equipment managers paint them black.
Halak being particular about his equipment shouldn't be a surprise. The 17-year NHL veteran has become famous for how clean his pads always look, but it's not with Vaseline.
Halak, who has also used a separate set of practice pads to keep his game pads from breaking down, cleans his game pads regularly to keep them looking new. It began with equipment staff in Montreal doing it for him semi-regularly his first four years in the League and continued with him doing it himself the next four seasons in St. Louis, first with a type of paint thinner and now using an over-the-counter cleaning solution with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to wipe off puck marks.
"People always ask me if it's another brand-new set of pads, but I just like that clean look," Halak said. "I don't like the puck marks on my game stuff."
Halak isn't alone. Martin doesn't plan to stop, either, even if he gets teased by teammates.
"Non-stop but I think you just have to like, keep doing it to show dominance," he said.