The first professional player to don a facemask was Clint Benedict, goalie for the Montreal Maroons, who took a puck to the face in January 1930 that sidelined him for a number of weeks. When he finally returned for a game against the New York Rangers, he was wearing what looked like a sparring mask boxers used to cover their noses. Unfortunately the protect-your-face trend didn't stick right away. Benedict stopped wearing his mask soon after, and players (goalies in particular) continued to go without face protection for almost three decades.
The watershed moment came on 1 November 1959 when a puck hit Jacques Plante, goalie for the Montreal Canadians, in his nose and broke it. He left the ice to have his face stitched up and refused to return until he had face protection. Plante went on to design goaltender masks for himself and others, helping to introduce them as everyday equipment and pave the way for them to ultimately become mandatory.
The first hockey mouthguard was, to little surprise, invented by a Canadian in the 1950s. Arthur Wood was both a coach for the Cooksville Hockey Association and a practicing dentist who was dismayed by how many hockey playing children he saw on a regular basis with missing or broken teeth. Along with fellow coach Charlie Patterson, he created a mouthguard for hockey players and went on to make mouthguards mandatory when he became the head of the Cooksville Hockey Association.
Today, mouthguards are commonly used by hockey players of all ages and skill levels. Often they are a required piece of equipment, but when they are not most players still wear them. 90% of National Hockey League (NHL) players, for example, choose to use mouthguards even though the NHL doesn’t mandate them.
