Glenn Hall, Pathbreaking All-Star Hockey Goalie, Dies at 94
Known as “Mr. Goalie,” he created the so-called butterfly style and played in a record 502 consecutive games, without wearing a mask. He received 300 stitches.
Glenn Hall, a National Hockey League goaltender who pioneered the modern “butterfly” style and played in a record 502 consecutive regular-season games, all without wearing a mask, died on Wednesday in Alberta. He was 94.
His death was
announced by the Chicago Blackhawks, his team for 10 of his 18 seasons, and by the N.H.L. on the league’s
website and in a
statement by its commissioner, Gary Bettman.
Known as hockey’s “Mr. Goalie,” Hall won a Stanley Cup with the 1961 Blackhawks and was named a first-team N.H.L. All-Star seven times. He played during an era that also produced the brilliant goaltenders
Terry Sawchuk,
Jacques Plante,
Johnny Bower and
Gump Worsley.
He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1975, four years after retiring. “I’ve yet to see anybody better,” Scotty Bowman, Hall’s coach with the St. Louis Blues and the winningest coach in N.H.L. history, said long after Hall retired.
Hall won the Calder Memorial Trophy as the league’s top rookie for the 1955-56 season, playing for the Detroit Red Wings. He captured the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player of the 1968 playoffs at age 36, playing for the expansion-team Blues.
He was a three-time recipient of the Vezina Trophy, awarded to the league’s best goalie, and his 84 shutouts are No. 4 on the career list. He played in 13 All-Star Games.
When Hall made his N.H.L. debut in the 1952-53 season, playing briefly with the Red Wings, goaltenders employed a standup style. They stopped shots with their gloves, their sticks or their skates, and flopped down only when they absolutely had to.
Shunning the standup approach of the pre-mask era, Hall created the “butterfly” style that was gradually emulated around the league.
He went down to his knees with his pads spread out in a wide V to seal off the corners of the net when he anticipated a low shot from close range. His stick was positioned to keep shots from going between his legs, and since his back remained straight, he could spring up quickly after creating a wall to frustrate shooters.
“He put his head right down there and he had the quickness to get his head out of the way and his hand up there,”
Dave Dryden, the Hall of Fame goalie who was Hall’s teammate with the Blackhawks in the mid-1960s, recalled in the Canadian documentary series “Legends of Hockey.”
“Glenn had absolute courage,” Dryden said.
At a time when teams carried only one goaltender, Hall set his consecutive-game streak between 1955 and 1962, playing in all 70 games through seven straight seasons with the Red Wings and the Blackhawks. The streak ended in November ’62 when a strained back forced him to leave a game against the Boston Bruins.
Although he declined to wear a mask until his final seasons, with the Blues, Hall was not intimidated by wicked shots. But he had jitters as game time approached, prompting him to throw up.
“After the game, I was whistling and happy,” Hall told Douglas Hunter in “A Breed Apart” (1995), a history of hockey goaltending. “Before the game, I was hyper as hell. I couldn’t wait for them to drop the puck.”
Glenn Henry Hall was born on Oct. 3, 1931, in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, the son of a railway worker, and began playing in goal on a youth team.
While playing junior hockey in the late 1940s, he honed his skills at an instructional camp in Ontario owned by the Ranger goalies
Chuck Rayner and Jim Henry.
After all or parts of four seasons with the Red Wings, Hall was traded to the Blackhawks in July 1957. Four seasons later he starred for a Chicago team also featuring Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, who unleashed ferocious slap shots with their newly developed curved sticks.
When the Blackhawks reached Game 6 of the 1961 playoff semifinals, against the Montreal Canadians, the public address announcer at Chicago Stadium introduced Hall as “Mr. Goalie” to roars from the crowd of 20,000.
Hall proceeded to shut out Montreal, eliminating the Canadiens. The Blackhawks won their first Stanley Cup championship since 1938 by defeating the Red Wings in the finals.
After 10 seasons with the Blackhawks, Hall was drafted by the Blues before the 1967-68 season, when the N.H.L. doubled in size from its original six teams.
Hall won the Vezina Trophy outright with the Blackhawks in the 1962-63 season. He shared it with Denis DeJordy in 1966-67, when they alternated in goal for Chicago, and he was a co-recipient with Plante in 1968-69, when they shared the goaltending for the Blues.
He retired after the 1971 season with a 2.49 goals-against average.
He was married to Pauline Hall, who died in 2009, the NHL.com columnist Dave Stubbs
wrote. His survivors include their four children, Pat, Leslie, Tammy and Lindsay, the N.H.L. said in a
statement.
After his playing days, Hall was a goaltending consultant for the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames.
Hall estimated that he took up to 300 stitches from flying pucks over his career.
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ Jim Pappin once unleashed a shot that inflicted a large gash across Hall’s lips and knocked out a tooth.
“The dentist told me how lucky I was,” The Calgary Herald quoted Hall as recalling. “I said through my swollen lips, ‘Ah don’ fee’ wucky.’”
nypost.com
My heart is broken 
,,,,,,,,,,,
