Just something minor leagues do? I'm used to seeing helmets all around during games.
shareWhen I was a kid, hardly any hockey players wore helmets. It was a sign of weakness. I grew up in Indianapolis, and we had a WHA team, the Racers. They had goalie named Andy Brown who played goal with no helmet, no mask.
shareThe NHL didn't mandate them until 1978. Even then players were grandfathered in.
-"It's in the net! They score! They score! The 'Hawks win the Stanley Cup!" - John Wiedeman WGN 720
Craig MacTavish was the last NHL player to play without a helmet well into the 90s. I remember him playing for New York in the 1994 Stanley Cup final with no helmet, it was a strange sight to see by that time.
shareGoalies didn't even start wearing masks until the 1960s.
sharethanks for clearing this up
for a moment i thought it was done to see the actors better :)
(there are even a few players with glasses on....wow )
On the subject of goalies not wearings masks. Glenn "Mr. Goalie" Hall had his ironman streak of consecutive starts in goal without a mask. He also invented the Butterfly without wearing one (which of course exposed his face to some real potential damage.)
shareGump Worsley didn't wear a mask until very late in his career. As mentioned, Andy Brown didn't wear one ever. I remember him with the Penguins. The full face masks like the one's in the movie started dying out after Bernie Parent got a stick in the eye which ended his spectacular career. The first player I remember wearing the cage style mask was Billy Smith of the Islanders. Tony Esposito put a cage around the eyes of his trademark mask. As for players wearing helmets, as a Flyers fan, I only remember a few players wearing them like Andre Dupont, Jimmy Watson, Ross Lonsberry, and Orest Kindrachuk.
shareFirst was Jaques Plante in 1959, then Gerry Cheevers in the early mid 60's. Cheevers trademark was drawing stitches on the mask where a puck had hit. By the end of his career it was almost all stitches! Glenn Hall started using the mask when he was traded to St. Louis, I think.
shareBill Masterton of the Minnesota North Stars was long believed to have died as a result of an on-ice collision with the boards during a game in January 1968. Although he had worn a helmet during his college career at the University of Denver, when he joined the NHL’s North Stars, it wasn’t considered acceptable for any player to wear a helmet. http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/sports/hockey/2011/05/28/star_investigation_what_really_killed_nhls_bill_masterton/mastertonpic.jpeg
There’s some question as to whether Masterton’s death was directly related to that collision or to an earlier concussion he had suffered; but his death often was considered a reason why more players began wearing helmets even before the NHL made helmets mandatory.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/2011/05/28/star_investigation_what_really_killed_nhls_bill_masterton.html
If it is what it is, what is it?