“I’ll take a Tony Esposito, a Jacques Plante, and a Ken Dryden please”

Thanks to Chuq von Rospach (who, in a slashdot-like moment has posted this to his blog TWICE) for pointing out this cool site/product:

Vintage Goaltender Masks .

I always wanted a real Jacques Plante/Fibrosport mask when I was playing.

I REALLY miss playing hockey a LOT. I miss the intensity of concentration and action. It was such a Zen-like activity. 100% focus on that puck and the constantly changing geometry of the ice surface and players in front of me. For X minutes I’d not think about ANYTHING… I was just a reflex… a reaction, …a predictive machine in a game of angles and geometry. Seconds of hyper-action surrounded by minutes of almost passive observation.

A couple of cement-heads tangling in the crease while my attention was on the action in the slot, and seconds… and three knee surgeries later… I was done forever. I tried to keep playing, but it just didn’t work. My doc said I’d have to stop if I wished to still be able to walk as an old man.

sigh…