Joseph Jacques Omer Plante was a Canadian professional ice hockey goaltender. He was considered one of the most important innovators in hockey. In 1932, he began playing hockey skateless and with a tennis ball using a goaltender hockey stick his father had carved from a tree root. At the age of 12, he started playing organized hockey. When he was watching his school’s team practice the coach ordered the goaltender off the ice after a heated argument and Plante asked to replace him since there was no other goaltender available which the coach permitted. Two years later he was playing on five different teams including the local Factory team and teams in the midget, juvenile, junior, and intermediate categories.
He joined the Quebec Citadelles in 1947. While playing, Plante started to play the puck outside his crease which angered his managers who believed that the goaltender should stay in the net and let his players recover the puck which, is now standard practice for goaltenders. That same season, the Citadelles beat the Montreal Junior Canadians in the league finals and he was named the most valuable player on his team. This game is when Montreal Canadiens General Manager, Frank J. Selke, became interested in acquiring Plante as a member of the team. In 1949, Selke offered Plante a contract which he accepted. In 1953, he was called up by the Canadiens to play, as both goaltenders were out of commission (one had retired and the other one had fractured his jaw).
During the 1952 to 1953 NHL season, he played the playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks and won his first playoff game. Montreal won that series and eventually the Stanley Cup. In 1953, Selke assigned Plante to the Buffalo Bisons of the American Hockey League so fans in the US would get to know him.
During the 1959-60 season, he wore a goaltender mask for the first time in a regular season game. He’s used this mask in practice since 1956 but was not permitted to wear it during regular games because his head coach was afraid it would impair his vision. On November 1st, 1959 his nose was broken when he was hit by a shot fired by Andy Bathgate 3 minutes into a game against the New York Rangers, and he was taken to the dressing room for stitches. When he had returned he was wearing the crude homemade goaltender mask that he had been using in practice. The coach only agreed for him to wear it on the condition that Plante would discard the mask when the cut healed. During 1960, the Canadians had won their 5th straight Stanley Cup which would be Plante’s last. During this time he subsequently designed his own and other goaltender masks as he was not the first NHL goaltender known to wear a face mask (the first one was Montreal Maroon’s Clint Benedict who wore a crude leather version in 1930 to protect a broken nose).
In 1963, he was traded to the New York Rangers and he played for the Rangers for a full season and part of a second. He retired the first time in 1965 but came back at the beginning of the 1967-1968 NHL season when he was called up by one of his ex-teammates who was seeking some help coaching the expansion of the Oakland Seals. In June of 1968, he was selected in an intraleague draft by the St Louis Blues. While playing for the Blues in the 1969 to 70 playoffs against the Boston Bruins, a shot was fired by Fred Stanfield and redirected by Phil Esposito that hit him in the forehead knocking him out and breaking his fibreglass mask. Once Plante regained consciousness at the hospital, it was known that the mask had actually saved his life. He was traded in the summer of 1970 to the Toronto Maple Leafs. At the end of the season, he was named to the NHL’s second All-Star team. Late in the 1972 to 73 season, he was traded to the Boston Bruins. After that, he accepted a 10-year contract to become a coach and General Manager of the Quebec Nordiques of the World Hockey Association. However, he was highly dissatisfied with his and his team’s performance and resigned at the end of the 73-74 season. He came out of retirement once again in the 1974-75 season to play 31 games with the Edmonton Oilers. He had retired again during the Oilers training camp in 1975 after receiving news that his youngest son had died.
After his retirement in 1975, he moved to Switzerland with his second wife and remained active on the North American Hockey scene as an Analyst Advisor and Goaltender Trainer. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1978 and in the fall of 1985, he was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. He passed away in a hospital in February of 1986. His coffin was carried from the church following the funeral mass and passed under the arch of hockey sticks held high by a team of young hockey players from Quebec visiting Switzerland for a tournament.
His legacy lives on as he was the first goaltender to skate behind the net to stop the puck. He’s also the first goaltender to write a how-to book about the position and he was a pioneer of stick handling the puck. Before that time, goaltenders passively stood in the nets and simply deflected pucks to defensemen or backchecking forwards. In 1981, he was inducted into the Canada Sports Hall of Fame and the Quebec Sports Patheon in 1994. His #1 Jersey was retired in 1995 by the Montreal Canadiens. The Jacques Plante Memorial trophy was established in his honour as an award to the top goaltender in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The Jacques Plante Trophy was established in Switzerland after his death, given out annually to top Swiss goaltenders. He also made the first fibreglass goaltender mask that became the standard; by late 1969, only a few NHL goaltenders went without one.