The Puck Stops Here

 The Blackhawks of the early 1960s were blessed with three outstanding young forwards (Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and Bill Hay) and two rock-solid veteran defensemen (Pierre Pilote and Elmer “Moose” Vasko). But the glue that held the whole enterprise together was goaltender Glenn Hall, who was so respected around the league that both teammates and opponents called him “Mr. Goalie.”

GLENN HALL

After the Hawks won the 1961 Stanley Cup, they went through the traditional handshake line with the runner-up Detroit Red Wings, received the greatest trophy in team sports, and then paid Hall the ultimate compliment--lifting him to their shoulders and carrying him off the ice. Mr. Goalie had allowed just 12 goals in the last eight games of the playoffs. 

 

     Hall did not win the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player of the Stanley Cup playoffs in 1961 because the award was not introduced until 1965. (He did win it in 1968 as a member of the St. Louis Blues, even though the Blues were swept in the Stanley Cup Final series by the Montreal Canadiens.) He won the Vezina Trophy as outstanding goalie three times, was a first-team All-Star seven times, and finished in the top ten for the Hart Trophy as regular-season MVP eight times. 

      Throughout his career, Hall was entirely fearless in doing whatever it took to stop the puck. He pioneered the “butterfly” style of goaltending, in which the goalie drops to his knees with his shin pads splayed out in either direction. This practice tended to put his face directly in range not only of the puck, which was more or less a given, but of swinging sticks as well. Hall nonetheless disdained the protective masks that other goalies had taken to wearing. 

     A year and a half after leading the Hawks to the Stanley Cup, Hall was forced to leave a game against the Boston Bruins because of a back injury. Denis DeJordy replaced him. It was November 7, 1962, and the date was noteworthy because it marked the first time since the start of the 1955-56 season that Hall had been off the ice during a regular-season or playoff game. He had played—without a mask and without a break—for 552 consecutive games, or more than seven full seasons (the first two were for Detroit, the rest for the Hawks).

“Hall had played the most demanding position in sports,” George Vass wrote in his 1970 history of the Blackhawks, “for 31,195 minutes and 33 seconds. He had played despite severe injuries, despite the constant tension that kept his stomach in turmoil and brought him to the bench on occasion to throw up. He explained his unbelievable tenacity as a case of simply doing his job. ‘Sure, there have been times in the last seven years when perhaps I wasn’t in condition to play,’ Hall said, ‘but making that decision is not my job. My job is to stop the puck.’”

 

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