THN Archive: The Goalies Behind Unforgettable 1980s NHL Masks

In the first curated post from The Hockey News Archive, Adam Proteau looks at the origins of goalie masks and the art form that is now part of every elite goaltender's head protection - starting with former Blackhawks netminder Murray Bannerman and a legendary THN magazine cover image.

Welcome to the first curated post from The Hockey News Archive. We’ll be posting one exclusive article from the 76-year-plus content vault that is The Hockey News magazine and taking another look at what place the article had in hockey history.

For this first post, we’ve chosen this Nov. 4, 1983 story from the Volume 37, Issue 6 edition of the magazine – nearly 40 years to the day of this current post.

In this piece, THN examined the evolution of the goalie mask from the point of view of Greg Harrison, a famous pioneer of goalie masks, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. 

In this story – which carried the headline “The Changing Faces of NHL Goaltenders,” author Bob McKenzie spoke at length with Harrison, who said in the story that “(w)ith all the league restrictions in minor hockey, all the kids today are growing up with the cage. One day, I suppose, there won’t be any NHL goalies wearing fiberglass masks.”

Harrison was right in his prediction about fiberglass masks, but the art form of goalie masks has stood the test of time, and virtually every elite netminder has heavily painted headgear. 

The art of goalie masks has never had better quality, but this deep dive with Harrison – and the unforgettable magazine cover image of longtime Blackhawks goaltender Murray Bannerman, whose mask makes him look like a horror movie character – is well worth your time.

Vol. 37, Issue 6, Nov. 4, 1983

By Bob McKenzie

They’ve been displayed in art exhibitions. They’ve been displayed in the Hockey Hall of Fame. They’ve been compared to primitive native art and they’ve been the subject of books. And now, even their creator admits, they are “a dying art form.”

Yes, the era of the painted, molded fibreglass goalie mask is still clinging to life, but it’s fading fast.

Instead, we have a generation of young goalies growing up with the cage, yielding an assembly-line look of helmet and screened mask, threatening to bury what has been one of the most colorful, interesting eras in the history of the National Hockey League.

“I guess you’ve got to bend with the times,” says Greg Harrison, a 29-year-old from Brampton, Ont., who has designed and made more stylized masks for NHL goalies than anyone else.

“With all the league restrictions in minor hockey, all the kids today are growing up with the cage. One day, I suppose, there won’t be any NHL goalies wearing fibreglass masks.”

When that happens—and there’s little doubt that it eventually will—it will be an end to Harrison’s avocation that started more than 14 years ago. It began when he was 15 and he decided to make a mask for himself — of course, he was and still is a goalie. He practiced and refined his art of mask-making at the Bobby Orr-Mike Walton sports camp in Orillia, Ont., where he worked as a teenage camp counselor. From there, his reputation grew and so did the concept of adorning masks with colored paint and vivid designs.

“At first,” Harrison says, “I was just making fibreglass masks. They weren’t being painted or anything like that.”

But NHL goalies soon began approaching him to have masks made. All was well until the day that Cooper Canada Ltd., which employed Harrison as a pro team service rep, came out with its helmet cage concept for goaltenders.

“It was a touchy situation,” Harrison says. “My job with Cooper was to promote the cage but I already had NHL goalies wearing my masks. Yeah, I guess you could call it a conflict of interests.”

Now, Harrison is a sales rep for a southern Ontario food services company, but if he misses being involved on a daily basis with the hockey world, he can take solace that the food industry doesn’t much care what kind of masks he makes in his spare time.

A glance around the NHL today indicates that Harrison’s work isn’t finished yet. At least a dozen NHL goalies — Chico Resch, Dennis Herron, Grant Fuhr, John Garrett and Murray Bannerman (who posed for the cover photograph on this issue), to name a few — wear masks produced and designed by Harrison. The graphics on the masks today range from a stylized Devils’ tail (Resch) to gushing oil wells (Fuhr) to tribal war paint (Bannerman).

How, Harrison is asked, did this entire trip into the art world begin?

“Well,” he responds, “I guess the first time anyone had anything drawn on a mask was Gerry Cheevers. Frosty Forristall, who is the Bruins’ trainer, drew on a couple of stitch marks for a joke once. Cheevers liked it and so they continued to do it.

“I don’t know if you can really call that decoration. It didn’t require much imagination. Then, when Doug Favell played in Philadelphia, he was wearing an Ernie Higgins mask. At Halloween, for a joke, the old Flyer trainer, Frank Lewis, painted orange sunbursts on the white mask. Favell liked it and kept it that way.

“The first time I ever did it was with Jim Rutherford. He was wearing a plain red Lefty Wilson mask. Because he was playing with Pittsburgh, I painted it powder blue. When he was traded to Detroit, I repainted it white and put on red leather straps. I was going to give it to him like that, but then I decided to put a couple of wings over each eye hole.

“I figured that if he didn’t like them, I could paint over them. But he liked them and he continued to wear them.”

Since then, Harrison has lost count on how many different “art forms” he has created. That’s not surprising since one goalie, say John Garrett, for example, has gone through a plethora of designs because he’s played for so many different teams, each requiring a different paint job.

Some of his more memorable designs include Gilles Gratton’s famous “lion” mask, perhaps the most detailed design ever, Wayne Stephenson’s “badger” mask, Phil Myre’s “flame” mask, Gilles Meloche medieval-flavored Cleveland Barons mask, Rutherford’s “winged” look and Steve Baker’s Empire State mask, worn when he played for the New York Rangers.

But one of his most famous mask designs has no graphic illustration at all.

“Maybe the most striking mask I’ve ever made is Mike Liut’s,” says Harrison. “I’m not even sure whether he’s wearing it now. I know last season he switched to the cage, but his old mask, with the exaggerated and pronounced jawline, is one of the most recognizable masks of all time.”

Having played net, Harrison understands goalies. He knows them because he is one and that, he says, helps him to serve their needs. He realizes they can be flaky or superstitious and knows what they are looking for when they request graphic illustration on their masks.

“A goalie is a very individualistic position in a team sport,” Harrison says. “He feels alone and by wearing a painted mask, he’s expressing his individuality. He wants something that sets him apart from other goalies.

“You’ll notice that the goalies wearing the cage all look the same. You can’t tell them apart. That’s one feature of the fibreglass mask that goalies enjoy — they can still express themselves.”

Bannerman says he doesn’t remember exactly why he opted for a designer mask. “I guess I just wanted to be different,” he says. “I guess all goalies want to be different. A mask covers up your face so it’s some way to express yourself, I guess.”

It works the other way, too. Harrison notes that Liut, in his World Hockey Association days, wore a mask with a design on it. When he made it to the NHL, though, he told Harrison he didn’t need graphic design anymore, that his netminding ability should stand on its own.

Over the years, Harrison has gotten to know the idiosyncrasies and character quirks of his clients.

“Take Phil Myre for example,” Harrison says. “If I make him a new mask, he insists that I put in the foam padding from the old one. I made the Lone Ranger mask for John Davidson. He liked it, wore it a few times but then lost a game. He never wore it again. I can understand their reasoning because I’m a goalie, I’ve been there. I play in an intermediate league and I do the same thing, switching masks when I lose. It’s not unusual — if you understand goalies.”

Harrison says he is the first to admit that the fibreglass mask doesn’t offer nearly as much protection as the cage. John Garrett may well echo that point, having just received more than 30 stitches on his face, the result of a shot taken on his fibreglass mask.

“But I’m working on a combination fibreglass-cage prototype, similar to the kind that Chico Resch is wearing now, and I hope to get it CSA approved. I believe that the fibreglass-cage combo is as safe as the cage. As far as I’m concerned, goalies weren’t made to wear helmets. In a crouch, it puts their head at an unnatural angle. But there’s no question, that right now, the cage is very safe.”

So as the number of goalies wearing his masks declines, Harrison spends his spare time trying to come up with a fibreglass-cage combination that will be safety approved, which means young goalies will be able to wear it.

In the meantime, he is thankful for the opportunities he has had, for the friendships and associations he has developed and for the mark he has left on the game.

“When Dennis Herron first came to me he couldn’t even speak English,” Harrison says. “Now, we’re very good friends.

“The McMichael Art Gallery (in Kleinburg, Ont.,) had a display of my masks along with Indian masks, which was really interesting because they were so similar. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it was the best attendance they’d ever had at a winter showing.

“I’ve really enjoyed doing them (the masks). I’ve got to meet a lot of interesting people. At the Hall of Fame dinner in September I met Glenn Hall, which was an honor. And you know what he said to me? He said, ‘I wish to hell that I had known you 25 years ago. I wouldn’t have all these (scars).’

“I guess I’m just happy to have contributed. Maybe it is a dying tradition, but it’s sure added a lot of color to the game.”

THN Archive is an exclusive vault of 2,640 issues and more than 156,000 for subscribers, chronicling the complete history of The Hockey News from 1947 until today. Visit THN.com/archive and subscribe today at subscribe.thehockeynews.com