The goalie mask is a blank plastic canvas, and special occasions such as this week’s set of outdoor games at Yankee Stadium or the upcoming Olympics allow these lone sentinels of hockey a chance to show their creative side.
Until the dastardly designers go too far and get flagged by the International Olympic Committee for violating rules about propaganda.
The Team USA goalies headed to Sochi recently unveiled their helmet designs. Jessie Vetter, the starter for the US women’s team, developed a mask concept with all the requisite American iconography.
Stars-and-stripes motif: check. Fearsome bald eagle with cool talons: check. Miniature Capitol Building: check. US Constitution with a couple of lines from the preamble: whoa, whoa, whoa!
Pride in her country’s founding legal document? That’s a no go with the IOC, artist Ron Slater explained to InGoal magazine:
“No writings of any kind to promote the country is allowed,” Slater wrote. “A sort of ‘our country is better than your country” kind of thing that the IOC frowns upon. Her name had to come off because they see it as self promotion. They wanted everything to be team based. … Our original idea was ‘land of the free, home of the brave,’ and that would have had to have been removed as well.”
Ryan Miller, who minds the net for the Buffalo Sabres and led the Americans to a silver medal in the last Olympiad in Vancouver, shared his mask from Bishop Designs, which did pass muster. It adds a tatted-up Uncle Sam and — best of all — a back panel featuring Russian nesting dolls of Miller, his wife and his dog with a background of a clock pointing to 5:01 (it’s Miller time — get it?). Day-drinking allusions, apparently, are safe.
Jonathan Quick, the Los Angeles Kings goalie from Connecticut, will vie with Miller for the starting job. Here’s the teaser video for his very metallic-looking, non-controversial bucket: