You guessed it; another book...

 The Jacques Plante Story

O’Brien, A.

When I was 10 and 11, my favorite sports hero was then-42 year-old hockey goalie Jacques Plante. He was a retirement-age goalie on his second or third comeback, and was a bright star on my favorite hockey team, the sad-sack Toronto Maple Leafs. 

They were a young team that had missed the playoffs badly the year before (1969-70), and top goalie Bruce Gamble was having a tough life playing behind a young, error-prone defense. 

Then the Leafs obtained Plante in a round-about trade deal, and he proceeded to have the best season any goalie ever had (statistically), and helped the Leafs make the playoffs that year (the 1970-71 season). The team wasn’t terribly good, but Plante ended the season with a 1.88 GAA (that’s very, very good), and a save percentage of .944 (the best ever recorded). He was my hero. I hated when Bruce Gamble played (his GAA was 3.80 - not good, and his save percentage was .882 - also not good).

But to be fair, Gamble was a decent NHL goalie - he had a good career before that year, and he played in the NHL for a couple of seasons after that, before he was forced to retire due to health reasons. He just wasn’t as good as Plante. But that year, nobody was; most weren’t even close.

So I had to read his book. I’m not sure why I waited so many years to get it. (Actually, it’s quite possible that I have read it years ago, but have completely forgotten it.) Plante didn’t write the book himself - although articulate in his second language, English, he just wasn’t a writer. Andy O’Brien was the writer - and he did an okay job, writing in the 1960’s style. His writing assumed that the reader didn’t know much about hockey - that was the style then, but it’s at times a dull read for the knowledgeable fan. Fortunately, he seems to have used a tape recorder, and quoted Plante quite a bit - those bits were very interesting.

Unfortunately, the parts of the book about the Leaf days are the shortest part. That’s fair - the book was written the summer after the 70-71 season, and few people had noticed just how good he was that year. After all, they finished in 4th place and lost in the first round to the Rangers, four games to two. 

But the story was captivating. He had some great years in Montreal, where he won six Vezina trophies (best goalie), including five in a row. He also won another with the St. Louis Blues (his previous comeback, before his stint with the Leafs). However, he was hounded by coaches and management in Montreal. Inventing the goalie mask, his coach didn’t want him to wear it, because it showed cowardice... He had asthma (as I do), but the coach and management thought it was in his head - the gall to have an asthma attack right before a game... He had torn cartilage in both knees, but he was accused of faking soreness to avoid playing in games…

Also some interesting anecdotes - Plante noticed over the years that the nets were not the same size in every NHL rink. He noticed because in Chicago, Boston and New York, the cross-bar was slightly lower when he felt it on his back. After a lot of eye-rolling, some people measured the nets, and sure enough, they were smaller in those cities. Turns out that when they welded them together, they properly measured 6-feet between posts, but in some rinks they welded the cross-bar atop the 4-foot posts, while in others, they welded it between the posts. This resulted in shorter nets in those rinks. (The disparity was quickly and quietly resolved by the NHL.) 

In the 1971 playoff finals, Tony Esposito allowed a goal from center ice by Jacques Lemaire late in the 3rd period of game 7, which played a pivotal role in the result in that game. Everyone was shocked that an excellent goalie like Esposito could allow such an easy goal in a critical game. But Plante knew what happened - having played in the Chicago Stadium many times, he knew that on a high shot, you could lose the puck against all the dark and white shirts across the rink. And if you went down on your knees, you would make it worse. Esposito’s style was to flop on every shot, so it was not his fault - just a matter of bad timing - wrong place, wrong time, wrong shooter, wrong goalie.

If you’re a goalie, a fan of Jake the Snake, or were a huge 11-year-old Leaf fan in 1970-71, then I highly recommend this book.

8/10