A Sweaty Hand in the Face: On the Ice, It’s Perfectly Fair (Published 2008) (2024)

Devils center Travis Zajac grappled with Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Derian Hatcher after the whistle during a testy game last month. Zajac is 3 inches shorter and 35 pounds lighter than the 6-foot-5, 235-pound Hatcher, but the great equalizer in the scrum was apparently Zajac’s slimy, smelly pair of hockey gloves.

Zajac ground the palm of his left glove into Hatcher’s face with such force that Hatcher bit him (Zajac’s version) or the glove hooked onto Hatcher’s teeth (Hatcher’s version). Zajac, who had to have his middle finger stitched, did not deny that his face wash, often referred to as a stinky glove by players, goaded Hatcher.

“You don’t like to get it done to you,” Zajac said recently.

The face wash is a baiting tactic that has been around since gloves were invented, or, as the Devils television announcer Chico Resch said, “since hands were invented.”

“It’s a pride issue,” said Resch, a former goaltender, who played for the Islanders and the Devils during his 14-year N.H.L. career. “If I keep trying to rub my hands into your face, you’re going to get angry. The face is sort of an untouchable territory.”

But face washing, if done judiciously (or out of sight of a referee), is perfectly legal. The 222-page N.H.L. rule book addresses such gross misconduct as spitting, head-butting and hurling racial slurs, but only the most egregious of face washers risk an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. So everyone does it.

“It’s gross,” said Montreal center Bryan Smolinski, who has played for eight N.H.L. teams, including the Islanders. “Your hands get sweaty, and your gloves are disgusting. If there’s an annoying player you want to get back at, you just stick your glove in there with that stench and let him smell it a little bit.”

The general idea is to face wash an opponent to the point where he wants to retaliate — perhaps by throwing a punch, which is against the rules. (Hatcher was not penalized or fined by the league for the incident with Zajac.) And a penalty results in a power play for its opponent, and a successful power play can tilt the balance of a game.

Because the three-year-old salary cap has resulted in more parity in the league, games are generally more contentious, and the 30-team race for 16 playoff berths has become tighter. Any tactic that can unsettle an opponent is seen to be good, and the face wash can be as effective as any other. It is degrading to be face washed.

“It can irritate you really easily,” Islanders defenseman Brendan Witt said. “It’s used for getting underneath someone’s skin. It’s a tactic — it’s a good tactic. It’s been used for years, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere.”

Face washing used to be more creative and somewhat nastier. Even after the N.H.L. added a rule in 1963 that prohibited players from cutting out the palms of their gloves to get a better grip on their sticks, many players continued.

Resch, who played from 1973-87, said some players cut out the fingertips on the underside of their gloves — the better to scratch with.

“You could put in some foreign objects, let’s put it that way,” Resch said.

The palms of hockey gloves were also much more abrasive than they are now. Hockey gloves were used longer, causing the leather to dry out. By the end of the season, a player who face washed another might as well have used 40 grade sandpaper. Not everyone wore helmets, let alone the visors that cover many current players’ faces.

“The leather would, I agree, get extremely stiff and essentially simply would wear out,” the N.H.L. spokesman Frank Brown said. “Truth be told, the stench of sweaty hockey gloves also can be overpowering. From my perspective, the reason you would rub a guy’s face with the palm of an old leather glove would be manifold: to rub the rough, abrasive leather palm across a guy’s face, to give him a nose full of glove stink or, in the case of a cutaway palm, to tweak a guy’s nose.”

Players say that officials are much less tolerant of gloved punches during scrums than they used to be. But everyone is still looking for an edge. And it is not as if today’s hockey gloves, with synthetic leather palms that feel almost like suede, do not become slick and smelly. Most players say they go through only three or four pairs a year.

“It gets bad, like any equipment,” Zajac said of his gloves.

A glove-drying box is often stationed outside each team’s locker room so players can wear a pair of gloves, say, in the first period, dry them during the second period and wear them again in the third. The drying process tends to bake perspiration into the gloves and make them smell worse. But that can be a good thing.

“A face wash is not giving them too much respect,” Devils forward Mike Rupp said. “Guys have to be a little more responsible with their actions, but you’ve got to use any tactic to get under their skin.”

David Clarkson, the right wing who has become the Devils’ enforcer in his first full year with the team, said the best way to react to a face wash was to back off and skate the other way. The Devils’ coaching staff often tells the team not to take careless penalties, and being caught throwing a punch after being face washed certainly qualifies.

Sergei Brylin, the Devils’ veteran left wing, said: “It depends how you’re going to react to it. If it throws you off your game, too bad for you.”

So players keep doing it.