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.)

As I mentioned in my previous post on May 22, I have a new book coming out in the fall. It’s called The Mammoth Book of Hockey Trivia. (Feel free to pre-order a copy now.) I didn’t receive a lot of direction for the book, but my key takeaway was “give us lots!” And I did. So much so that about 50 pages had to be cut in order to get it to the printer on time. (It’s still pretty “Mammoth” at just under 500 pages.) I figured some of the text that got cut might prove useful for future posts, and as I was watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday, I thought the cut segment on playoff beards would work well now…

The tradition of players growing their facial hair during the playoffs is said to have started with the New York Islanders’ Stanley Cup dynasty of the 1980s. Wikipedia posits a theory put forward by hockey author and historian Andrew Podnieks that because the Islanders of that era featured Swedish players Stefan Persson and Anders Kallur, the playoff beard may have been inspired by tennis sensation Bjorn Borg of Sweden who let his beard grow during Wimbledon when he won five-straight championships from 1976 through 1980. Wikipedia also references an article by Ryan Kennedy in The Hockey News from 2006 in which Mike Bossy thought it was Butch Goring who started the trend.

An article by Ian Walker of Postmedia News, appearing in several newspapers in April of 2011, tried to determine the origin of the playoff beard. In it, Butch Goring deflects any credit for inspiring the tradition during his time with the Islanders. “It was well on its way by the time I came on board in 1980,” Goring says, “but I don’t think any of us gave a second thought about whether it would become such a big rallying point for everybody like it is today.”

Islanders captain Denis Potvin agreed. “I don’t know if we can take full credit,” says Potvin, “and I wish I had a great story for you, but it was just one of those things. Back then, we’d play four games in five nights in the opening round and it was just something that kind of happened. It certainly wasn’t choreographed or planned. I really don’t recall a moment where everyone said ‘Ah-ha, we’re going to go ahead and do this.”

Rob Rossi of The Athletic had a story about playoff beards on June 17, 2025. In it, Denis Potvin said, “We were too tired to shave. Then we just didn’t. That’s part of it, you know? To win the Stanley Cup is a miserable two months. The beard is a reminder of how much you have to put into it.”

Ken Morrow was a bearded member of the first Islanders championship team in 1980, but he’d brought his beard with him when he entered the NHL in February after winning a gold medal with the “Miracle on Ice” U.S. Olympic team. “The first person I remember putting us with the beards was Stan Fischler,” Morrow told Rossi. Fischler, the longtime NHL writer and broadcaster (and New York-area teams historian), wrote a story about the Islanders and their beards “at some point during our run,” said Morrow. Morrow added that though he couldn’t point to a specific teammate who led the playoff beard charge in 1980, he remembers everybody being on board entering the 1981 playoffs. “Don’t mess with what’s working.”

Wikipedia credits the phrase “playoff beard” to an unusual source, saying the birth of the term relates to the Detroit Red Wings during the regular season of 1984–85, when players on the team agreed not to shave until they won four games in a row. An article in the Detroit Free Press by Bernie Czarniecki on February 3, 1985, credits the idea to Ivan Boldirev and Danny Gare and says Brad Park called his new facial hair his “playoff beard.” But the term is actually older than that.


On April 26, 1983, the News of Paterson, New Jersey, refers to John Tonelli of the Islanders and his “lucky playoff beard.” Two years earlier, the Minneapolis Tribune on May 11, 1981, on the eve of the North Stars facing the Islanders in the Stanley Cup Final, has a photo of a shaggy Kevin Maxwell of Minnesota showing his “Stanley Cup Playoffs beard,” which may well have been inspired by the Islanders from the season before. 



Nearly three weeks before that, on April 23, 1981, the Minneapolis Star referred to North Stars rookie goalie Don Beaupre having “sprouted a very respectable playoff beard.” On May 10, 1981, James F. Clarity in the New York Times writes that the North Stars, during their first-round series with the Boston Bruins, “decided to grow beards as long as they lasted in the playoffs,” without referencing anything about the Islanders of 1980. But certainly many Islanders, including Potvin, Goring, Morrow and Clark Gillies, are sporting full beards in photographs at the end of the 1980 Stanley Cup Final when they had defeated the Philadelphia Flyers.

Ed Westfall was an original Islander from 1972 through 1979 who became a team broadcaster in 1979–80. In Rob Rossi’s 2025 story for The Athletic, he writes of Westfall saying that he and Bryan Trottier have often debated whether the 1980 Islanders truly pioneered playoff beards. “Both men said their Islanders teams in the mid-to-late 1970s also had players who didn’t shave during the playoffs,” wrote Rossi. “But, as the saying goes, winners write history, and … ‘Those teams didn’t win the Cup,’ Westfall said, laughing. ‘When you win and the players have beards, well, there you go — it’s a tradition, I guess.’” (Apparently, a handful of New York Rangers were growing playoff beards in the mid-1970s, but the Rangers never had much playoff success.)

In photographs and videos of the Islanders and the Stanley Cup from 1980 through 1983, only a handful of players are ever fully bearded. And the concept of the playoff beard didn’t catch on immediately after the Islanders’ dynasty. The Edmonton Oilers of 1984 through 1990 were mostly clean-shaven during their five Cup victories in those years. Ian Walker in his Postmedia story of 2011 wonders if the Oilers were just too young to successfully grow beards, or if it was a way to distance themselves from a hated rival.

Ian Walker attributes the comeback of the playoff beard to the New Jersey Devils of 1988. The Devils clinched their first playoff spot since moving from Colorado in 1982 on the last day of the 1987–88 season and then advanced all the way to the Eastern Conference Final. “Part of it was respect for the tradition the Islanders had started and part of it was superstition,” said Ken Daneyko, who was a rookie at the time and would go on to win the Cup in New Jersey in 1995, 2000 and 2003. “The playoffs really are an all-for-one mentality and growing a beard gave you a sense of purpose and focus.”

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything new for my web site. There’s no particular reason for this one now, except that we’re halfway through the Stanley Cup playoffs. I’m certainly not making any predictions, but it seems to me I should be writing something at this point! As people generally know, it’s been 33 years since a Canadian team – a Canadiens team – last won the Stanley Cup in 1993. Will this be the year?

In the past, years ending in ‘6’ have been good ones for Montreal teams. The Montreal Victorias lost the Stanley Cup to the Winnipeg Victorias in February of 1896, but won it back in December 1896. The Montreal Wanderers won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1906, the Montreal Canadiens won their first title in 1916, and the Montreal Maroons won in 1926. After the Red Wings beat the Maple Leafs in 1936, the Canadiens won the Cup again in 1946, 1956, 1966, 1976 and 1986! No such luck in 1996, 2006 or 2016, but the Montreal Victoire just won the Walter Cup as champions of the Professional Women’s Hockey League in the first ‘6’ year in league history and the Canadiens are still alive.

The first Canadiens Stanley Cup in 1916 came when the team played in the National Hockey Association (forerunner of the NHL) and at a time when the NHA champions faced the champions of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association for the Stanley Cup. In 1916, that was the Portland Rosebuds. The team is sometimes referred to as the Uncle Sams, though Portland is known as The Rose City and by whatever name they were called (mostly Rosebuds), they were the first American team to play for the Stanley Cup but fell to the Canadiens in the last game of a best-of-five series.

The Canadiens beat Portland to win the Stanley Cup in 1916, but then lost it to Seattle (the Metropolitans of the PCHA) in 1917. Those two teams faced each other again in 1919 when their series was halted by the Spanish Flu Epidemic, but mostly, Montreal has faced teams from more traditional hockey markets in the Stanley Cup Final: fellow “Original Six” teams Toronto, Detroit, Chicago, Boston and New York, but also Calgary as well as Philadelphia and St. Louis, who’ve been around long enough now that they don’t seem like non-traditional hockey markets. And I guess we have to include Los Angeles in there too. Tampa Bay (who beat the Canadiens for the Stanley Cup in 2021) still seems like a less traditional market, but certainly a successful one … which is what you’d have to say about Colorado and Vegas as well, one of whom the Canadiens will meeting in the Final if they should knock off another less traditional market in Carolina.

After wrapping up their 1916 Stanley Cup series with Portland in Montreal on March 30, the two teams went on a U.S. barnstorming trip, which wasn’t uncommon at the time. While the Quebec Bulldogs and Montreal Wanderers of the NHA traveled to Boston for exhibition games, the Canadiens and Rosebuds went to New York for a two-game, total-goals series at the St. Nicholas Rink on April 4 and 5. The Canadiens won the opener 6–3 with stars Didier Pitre and Newsy Lalonde scoring twice each. The New York Tribune referred to the contest as “what is said to have been the greatest game of hockey ever played in this country,” although newspapers of this time were fond of hyperbole. “The crowd of probably 2,000 persons that gathered to watch these wonderful professional players in action [and seems to have been considered a sizeable crowd] was thrilled for every minute of the struggle.”

Goalie Georges Vezina was the true star of Game 1, with the Tribune saying he “was the personification of coolness as he parried the storm of shots that came buzzing, zipping and tearing at the cage.” The paper estimates Vezina made at least 40 saves. In Game 2, Portland scored a 4–1 victory, which made the score 7–7 overall. Overtime was needed, and Didier Pitre scored after just 1:59 of extra play so that while the final score was 4–2 Portland, Montreal took the series 8–7. New York newspapers mention a $1,000 prize, but the Montreal Gazette on April 12, 1916, notes Canadiens players split up $700 as their winning share with the Portland team getting $500.

There wasn’t much time for sightseeing in New York as the teams were scheduled next for a three-game series in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 7, 8 and 10. Games would be played at the Elysium, which opened in 1907 and was said to have been (at least in its first few years) the largest artificial ice surface in the world. Despite many newspaper stories and ads boasting about the size, the only reference I could find at the time said the ice surface measured 160×100 … feet, I assume. But while 100-feet in width would definitely have been large at the time, 160 in length wouldn’t be. Wikipedia, however, notes the dimensions as 86×238, which would have been plenty long and seems more in keeping with what is visible in the images available online and in the newspaper clipping above.

The Canadiens won the opener 7–6 after taking a 7–0 lead midway through the second period and hanging on at the finish. Portland continued their late scoring onslaught early in the second game with five goals in the first period en route to an 8–5 victory that tied the series. Didier Pitre was hurt in that game and didn’t play the finale, but Montreal romped to a 13–2 win behind three goals from Newsy Lalonde, four from Goldie Prodger (who’s name was usually written as Prodgers at the time) and five from Amos Arbour.

The Canadiens pocketed $600 for their victory in Cleveland with Portland players settling for $400, but the big windfall came with the fact that in winning the series, Montreal had their travel expenses covered too. “The players all got a piece of coin and travelled like princes,” said managing director George Kennedy in The Montreal Star on April 12, 1916. “What more could they want?” Still, “the club made little,” Kennedy complained.

I knew nothing about this trip, and found it interesting … but another reason why I’m writing this now (and why I haven’t written very much this year), is because I have a new book coming out in the fall with Firefly Books. It’s taken up most of my hockey-writing energy of late. It’s called The Mammoth Book of Hockey Trivia, and while I don’t love “Mammoth” in the title and, like my kids book series for Scholastic – of which I’m also currently doing updates for the most recent one, and which this book is like a G-I-G-A-N-T-I-C (you might say, Mammoth!) version of – it’s facts and figures and stories and statistics, not questions-and-answers. As some people know, I’ve grumbled my way through much of this project, but now that it’s in the home stretch I’m pretty happy with it. Feel free to pre-order a copy now … but I’m sure you’ll hear more about it from me after the summer.

And, hey, if you’re in and around Owen Sound tomorrow, don’t forget my talk for the Island View Drive Rate Payers Association at the Kemble Church…