It’s been 42 years now since I last went back to school, and pretty much 20 since I even had a child going back to school. And for pretty much 22 years from 1996 to 2018, summer was my busiest work time of the year. Even so, I still find the days after Labour Day to be pretty depressing. And yet, after a summer of inactivity on my web site, here I am back at it again…

I pretty much refrain from turning my own sporting interests from baseball to hockey until early October at best and usually not until after the World Series — especially since the Blue Jays have climbed back into wild card contention and are proving fans with “meaningful games in September” — but I do have a hockey book coming out soon, so hockey it is today.

As I mentioned in some of my last posts in the spring (May 22 and June 4), The Mammoth Book of Hockey Trivia is out this fall. Book releases aren’t as exact as movie releases. The true date really depends on how quickly books are delivered from the printer to the publisher’s warehouse, and then how quickly they are sent from the warehouse to various booksellers, and then how quickly the booksellers actually start selling them. The official release date is still October 1, but I know of at least one friend who pre-ordered the book in July and has received his copy already. So, feel free to order your own copy right now!

The book is a trivia book in the dictionary definition of the word in that it’s full of facts and figures, not questions and answers. But at 496 pages, it is pretty mammoth. And today, I’m featuring a few stories from Chapter 10 about the history of the goalie mask (which I had to fight a little bit to make sure was included in the book when all was said and done). It’s a topic I’ve covered on my web site in years past (December 2, 2020 and March 11, 2015), though I was surprised how many years past! These stories today are from the early 1920s — which I still have trouble wrapping my brain around being more than 100 years ago! Two of them basically occurred within a few days of each other.

Herbert Lyons was a goalie with a team called the Greys in Montreal. He was pictured in The Montreal Star on February 4, 1922, wearing a full catcher’s mask and with a caption saying, “Unique apparition which will appear during the matches of the Mount Royal Hockey League in the Arena tomorrow afternoon.” The newspaper notes Lyons “had his nose split some time ago,” and would be wearing the mask to protect his injury. Lyons’ story was also reported on that same day in The Calgary Herald and his masked picture appeared in The Daily Province in Vancouver on February 14. Only The Montreal Star followed up with a report of the Saturday game in its Tuesday edition on February 7 … and it turns out he didn’t go through with wearing it. “Lyons, Grey’s goaler, appearing on the ice with his mask could not stand the teasing from spectators and discarded it at the beginning of the game.”

At almost the same time Herbert Lyons wasn’t wearing his mask in Montreal, Iver Anderson of the Duluth Hornets was wearing one in a United States Amateur Hockey Association game against the Cleveland Indians in Duluth, Minnesota on February 7, 1922. The previous night, also against Cleveland, Anderson was hit in the mouth one minute in to the third period on a shot by future NHL star Nels Stewart and had four teeth knocked out. The Cleveland coach offered Duluth their substitute goalie, but Anderson refused to leave the game. Duluth was losing 3–2 at the time, and Anderson allowed another goal a few minute later “while still in a groggy condition,” according to the game report in The Duluth News Tribune, but his team rallied for a 6–4 win.

Other Duluth players had been banged up as well in the game that night, and the team was beaten 5–0 by the Indians in their February 7 game. “[T]here is no use in saying that Anderson was not in fit condition to play,” reported the News Tribune. “Everyone who saw him knew that much. Spending a sleepless night in a hospital; passing all afternoon in a dentist’s chair Anderson returned to the game last night. He wore a baseball catcher’s mask and this did not help him in keeping his eyes on the puck.”

Two nights later, Iver Anderson was back in action in Winnipeg for the Duluth American Legion team when they were defeated 11–7 by the Manitoba all-stars. “Anderson of Duluth wore a baseball catchers’ mask and had difficulty in keeping his eye on the puck,” read a report from Winnipeg that ran in The Duluth News Tribune on February 10. Whether or not he wore a mask for the rest of the season, Anderson would put one on again early the next season on the night of December 30, 1922. Prior to a Duluth legion game with a team from the Canadian Soo (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario), he was hit in the face with a practice shot. “Anderson received a bad cut over his left eye,” said the News Tribune in its story on December 31, “but returned to the game with a baseball mask and football headgear.” He played well that night in a 2–1 loss.

Iver Anderson is an interesting story. The Duluth News Tribune said of him on November 1, 1922, that he was “the first player to use a baseball mitt during actual play in the net,” and the accompanying picture makes it clear he was wearing one. After he left Duluth to play with the St. Louis Flyers of the American Hockey Association for the 1928–29 season, The St. Louis Star and Times shed more light on Anderson’s baseball background. A story in that St. Louis newspaper on December 12, 1928, claims Anderson had been a baseball catcher and knew little about hockey until he was pressed into action by a hockey team whose goalie was out with the flu.

“To say Anderson made a hit in his first appearance is so mild it’s actually libelious,” says the story. “He was a wow, a panic. He played a good game, but that wasn’t what knocked the customers out of their chairs. He scored on his interpretation of what the well-dressed goalie should wear. His left hand was buried in his old catcher’s mitt. In his right he carried a hockey stick half the regulation size, which he explained was less cumbersome and far more sensible than that usually carried.” Though it gets some of the details wrong, the St. Louis paper also gives a brief outline of Anderson wearing his baseball mask in his Duluth days.

Unfortunately, Iver Anderson was no longer wearing a mask on February 1, 1929, when he was playing for St. Louis while back in his hometown of Duluth. Early in the second period, Anderson was hit in the face again and injured badly. Anderson returned to action for the Flyers’ final home game of the season in St. Louis on March 1, 1929. It was already known that he would retire at the end of the season, and he gave up 12 goals in a 12–2 loss to the Tulsa Oilers. He did not play on the season-ending four-game road trip to Tulsa, and though there were reports in November of 1929 that St. Louis wanted him at least as a back-up goalie, Anderson never played again.

Back in 1921, better protection for goalies had been on the agenda when the Ontario Hockey Association met for its annual convention on Saturday, December 3. OHA executives did not vote in favor of the goal crease, which had already been adopted in an earlier meeting of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, but they did agree to let goalies wear a mask if they chose to. Rule 15 in the OHA rule book dealt with goalies. Previously, when it came to equipment, the rule for many years had stated, “He may wear pads, but must not wear a garment such as would give him undue assistance in keeping goal.” Now, a sentence was added saying, “He may wear a mask to protect his face and head if he so desires.”

Still, no OHA goalie was known to wear a mask until Len Crook of Belleville in 1923. Crook played goal for four different Toronto teams in the senior division of the Ontario Hockey Association from 1916 through 1922, but his off-ice job as an employee of the Canadian Bank of Commerce took him to Belleville in the spring of 1922. The Daily Intelligencer in Belleville would repeatedly misspell his name as Crooks, and in the newspaper’s story on January 11, 1923, of the team’s 8–3 win over Brockville the night before, it was reported “Crooks stopped a nasty shot from the corner which struck him in the mouth splitting both lips and loosening his teeth.” Crook was unable to continue, but returned for the next game when Belleville beat Queen’s University 4–1 on January 15. Just over a year after the OHA had passed its rule allowing goalies to wear masks, Crook became the first one known to do so. He played at least one more time with a mask in Belleville’s next game on January 26.

After the 1922–23 season in Belleville, Len Crook returned to Toronto for a new job with the Bank of Nova Scotia and retired from hockey. There is never a specific description of the type of mask he wore, but the The Toronto Star on January 11, 1924, notes Crook had finished the 1922–23 season with a headgear and mask and that he believed the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association should make such gear compulsory for every goalie. “The way players drive that puck nowadays makes it dangerous,” said Crook. “Some day someone will stop one with his temple and you know flowers are dear in the wintertime.”

Still, it was not until the 1958–59 season that the NHL added a line to its rule book stating: “Protective masks of a design approved by the Rules Committee may be worn by goalkeepers.” Jacques Plante began wearing a mask in games the very next season although it would not be until the 1974–75 season that every goalie in the NHL wore one. As late as 2009–10, the NHL rule book only said masks “may” be worn by goalkeepers. The wording wasn’t changed to “must be worn” until 2010–11.

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If you’re looking for a different kind of hockey book, here are two interesting ones people contacted me about this summer.

For Toronto Maple Leafs fan interested in some light-hearted though factually accurate relief from the team’s Stanley Cup struggles since 1967, there’s 60 Years of Disappointment by Richard Spiegel.

And, if you’ve got a young reader on your shopping list, there’s That’s Mein Boy: The Alex Levinsky story by Rabbi Ron Isaacs. Ron is a long-time New Jersey rabbi who was born in Toronto and has numerous books — mainly about Judaism — to his credit. (As some of you may recall, I wrote about Levinsky on my site back in 2024.)