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. 

Hayley Wickenheiser is a Canadian former ice hockey player. She’s also a resident physician and assistant general manager for the Toronto Maple Leafs. She was the first woman to play full-time professional men’s hockey in a position other than goalie. 

She started playing minor ice hockey in outdoor rinks when she was five and played exclusively on boy’s teams until she was 13. In 1991, she represented Alberta in the 18 and under Canada Winter Games Imagine where she got a gold medal and was named the most valuable player of the final game. 

At the age of  15, in 1994, she was named to Canada’s national women’s team for the first time and she remained a member of it until 2017 when she retired. Her first International Tournament was the 1994 World Championship held in Lake Placid, New York and Canada won gold. During her second world championship in 1997, they also got a gold medal and she earned a spot on the tournament’s All-Star team. In 1999, she helped Canada win another gold medal and was named the tournament MVP.  In total, she has seven World Championship gold medals and three silver. 

She was a member of Team Canada in the 1998 Winter Olympics when women’s hockey was introduced as a metal sport. Canada won silver and she was named to the tournament all-star team. During the 1998 Olympics, she impressed men’s Team Canada general manager Bobby Clark so much that he invited her to participate in the Philadelphia Flyers rookie camps in 1998 and 1999.  In 2002, during the Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, Canada won gold and she was named tournament MVP. Then they won gold again in the 2006 Winter Olympics and yet again she was named tournament MVP. On February 17th, 2010 she became the all-time leading Olympic goal scorer as Canada defeated Sweden 13 to 1 at the Vancouver Olympics. 

For the Women’s Professional Hockey League, she was named MVP in 1996 at the Esso Women’s Hockey League Nationals. In ‘97 and ‘98 she won nationals with Edmonton Chimos and Calgary Oval X-treme and she was named MVP for both years. 

In men’s professional hockey league in 2003, she became the first woman to score a goal playing in a men’s semi-professional league for the HC Salamat. In 2008, she signed a one-year contract with the Eskilstuna Linden. In 2011, she was named one of the “Top 100 Most Influential People in Hockey” at rank 59th by The Hockey News, one of the “25 Toughest Athletes” by Sports Illustrated, and one of the “Top 50 Most Powerful Women in Canada” by the Globe and Mail. 

From 2010 to 2011 she was part of the Calgary Dinos women’s ice hockey team while she was completing her degree in kinesiology. She became the first ever Dino to win the Brodrick Trophy as CIS MVP. In 2017, she announced her retirement from professional hockey to pursue medical school and, in 2018, she was hired as the Assistant Director of Player Development for the Toronto Maple Leafs. 3 years later, she was promoted to senior director of Player Development for the Maple Leafs. In 2022, she was named Assistant General Manager of the Maple Leafs. 

She was also an accomplished softball player as, in 2000, she was on the Canadian softball team for the 2000 Summer Olympics. Since the Olympics, she has not been active in softball.

In total, she has been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame (in 2019), the IIHF Hall of Fame (also in 2019), the Canada West Hall of Fame (in 2021), and Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame (in 2022). She’s played in five Winter Olympic Games (1998, 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014) and multiple World Championships.