Resistance to protective gear is nothing new or exclusive to the martial arts.
In their heyday, professional hockey players would zip down the ice free of the cumbersome burden of helmets, the wind ruffling their heroic hair. Goalies were considerably braver, sitting with naked faces in front of a giant target as a team of five men competed to launch hard discs directly at them at speeds nearing 100km/h. Jacques Plante, the now mythic former goalie of the Montreal Canadiens, is considered by many to be one of the greatest goalies to play the game. During the 1959 season, a slap shot destroyed his nose and a good chunk of his face. Jacques got stitched up like a propper warrior and went right back out on the ice–with one slight exception. Now he was wearing a fiberglass face protector. As unbelievable as it may seem to us today, his coach was furious and insisted he take it off. How could Jacque possibly play with that thing blocking his vision? Jacque dreamed of a future where he possessed a working nose that resembled something human so he refused and since there was no reserve goalie available, he played. The team won. The coach assumed he had seen the last of the mask but Jacques went on to help the team win their next 18 straight games wearing it. When at last Jacques crumbled to his coach’s insistence on the 19th game, the Canadiens lost. After that, the questions about the mask ended, the Canadiens won the Stanley Cup and gradually, goalie masks became increasingly popular until they were finally made mandatory.

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