Samuel St-Laurent and the last mask of yesteryear

At the time, Samuel St-Laurent didn’t think about that at all, but when he left the ice at the Joe-Louis Arena in Detroit on February 8, 1990, it was a piece of the history of the hockey who left with him.

From this match between Detroit and Chicago, the great book of hockey stories has retained very little, but by taking over from Glen Hanlon that evening in front of the Red Wings net, the time of his last lap in the NHL, St-Laurent became the last goalie to play with a first generation fiberglass mask.

“I never thought about that, I never checked if it was true, but that’s what everyone tells me, so it must be true!” begins by explaining the ex-guard on the end of the receiver. People talk to me about it quite often, but it’s not the most important thing in my life. »

There’s no movie that’s been made about it, nor is Sam St. Laurent’s final mask hanging on a wall at the Hall of Fame (“it’s in my house somewhere,” says -he). But a page was turned that evening in Detroit, a little more than 30 years after the appearance of the first mask of its kind, unexpectedly worn by Jacques Plante in front of the Canadian’s net in New York, on 1^er November 1959.

Plante’s gesture and its symbolism will have marked hockey in a different way, and his mask would subsequently make an epoch. From the following decade, and until the turn of the 1980s, the vast majority of NHL goaltenders would wear this type of mask, with holes at eye level and also often at mouth level.

Sam St-Laurent, for his part, was far from thinking about all that when he arrived on the ice of the NHL in 1985-1986. The Arvida native had spent most of his time in the minor leagues before landing a four-game audition with the New Jersey Devils that season.

He then moved to the Wings, with whom he played 30 games over the next four seasons.

“When I finally arrived in the league, I saw that the younger players were playing with masks that had grilles, the same ones we see today,” he continued. But I was used to the other model. There was no bar in front of my eyes and I liked that better, I saw the puck coming better that way. »

But at a time, the 1980s, when the throws were starting to become heavier and heavier, the brave like St-Laurent, who dared to venture with a mask of yesteryear in front of the net, were becoming more and more rare . Because it was starting to get a little risky to stand in front of Brett Hull or Al Iafrate with only a few millimeters of fiberglass on your face as protection.

“I got the puck in the face a couple of times,” admits St-Laurent. I remember a game against Chicago, the puck came from the faceoff circle directly into my face. I had a slight concussion, as they say…”

However, the Quebec goaltender had seen the dangers linked to fiberglass masks very closely when he arrived in the Philadelphia Flyers organization in 1979-1980; the previous season, a stick blade in the eye ended the career of the famous Bernard Parent, poorly protected by his mask.

“I arrived in the Flyers organization a year after that and I wore a mask similar to Bernard’s,” recalled St-Laurent. I don’t know if it was that dangerous. How many goalkeepers have suffered the same injury while wearing this mask? I never thought about that anyway. What were the other options? It was said that the helmet with the grille was not reliable, because the grille could break…”

Today, Samuel St-Laurent is a machine operator in Marieville, and he is far from the world of hockey, having been a goalie coach with the New York Rangers until the lockout of 2004. But he remains associated to this little piece of history which has marked hockey in its own way.

“I remember after I left, two other goalies, including Grant Fuhr, talked about facing each other one last time wearing their old masks, but in the end, they never did it…probably they were made say it was too dangerous! »