Ice Hockey

By Bill Ballou, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER- Mike Myers started off wanting to be a professional goalie, and that didn't quite work out, so he did the next best thing.

He became a professional goalie mask designer.

The 35-year-old Worcester resident, and former Assumption College goalie and assistant hockey coach, is considered to be one of the top designers of hockey goaltender masks.

It is his full-time profession, and he and assistant Jess Acciaccia decorate about 225 masks a year from Myers' shop at 75 Webster St.

"I have an obsession with goalie masks," Myers readily concedes.

That obsession surfaced early in his life. Myers learned to play hockey in suburban Washington, D.C. His first game in goal was at age 7, and he faced his first pucks while wearing one of the traditional old-style birdcage masks. It turned out that the Washington Capitals practiced at the same suburban rink Myers played in, so he got to know a couple of NHL goaltenders early on, Bernie Wolfe and Jim Bedard of the Caps.

"Bernie Wolfe was my favorite goalie growing up," Myers said. "I loved the Stars 'n' Stripes motif on his mask, and painted three masks like that." Later, through the Capitals connection, Myers sold his first pro masks to Olaf Kolzig and Jim Carey.

If Myers had been born, say, 25 years earlier, chances are pretty good he would have had to have gone into a different profession. Goalies didn't wear masks - they were considered a sign of weakness, mostly by the forwards and defensemen - until Jacques Plante finally put on one in the early 1960s.

The first goalie masks were pretty primitive and merely reduced the pain of playing goal rather than eliminated it. The first decorated mask was done in a pretty primitive motif, too, although it became a legend.

That was when Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers had stitch marks drawn on his classic Ernie Higgins-style mask, in Magic Marker, noting where he would have been cut had he been playing barefaced.

As masks evolved into a combination of masks and helmets, so did their decoration.

Masks became almost trademarks of a particular goaltender and his, or her, team, depending upon what level the player was at. The first really unique mask was worn by Gilles Gratton, who got his start in the World Hockey Association.

Myers graduated from Assumption in 1993 and tried out in the lower minor leagues, but never got past the exhibition schedules. He came back to Central Mass. and went into the goalie mask business full time in May 1995. He has done helmets for other sports such as bicycle racing and has done two for Lance Armstrong. "But 99 percent of my business is goalie masks," Myers said, "and it's what I gear myself toward."

Myers races bicycles, too, but does not tend goal anymore.

"I think I'll eventually go back to it," he said, "I found that my play was declining steadily from year to year, and even though it might just be a men's league you're in, the guys who are playing still want to win, and you feel bad when you let them down."

One of Myers' best customers through the years has been Dwayne Roloson of the Minnesota Wild, and formerly of the IceCats.

Myers has done 12 different designs for Roloson, including a special All-Star mask for when he played in the NHL All-Star Game. That one was a rush job that Myers was able to do in 24 hours.

"It was really nice having him local," Myers said of Roloson's season with Worcester, "and at that time, the IceCats would practice at the Lake Ave. rink once in a while. It was really weird seeing him in my old rink."

As customers go, Roloson was pretty easy.

"From player to player," Myers said, "the designs really differ. Roloson will just kind of let me do what I want, but some goalies are very particular right down to the last detail, like Jim Carey. He wanted everything done his way. But it mostly depends on the client."

And while Myers is a hockey fan in general, business is business, after all. When he watches a game, "I cheer for whoever's wearing my mask - absolutely."

Having been a goalie probably helps Myers deal with them as customers as well, since goaltenders are legendary for having unique personalities.

"I think you are born a goalie," Myers said. "Their ways are unique, and it can be good or bad, depending upon what arena in life you are talking. I have met some of the wackiest people on planet who are goalies - eccentric, routine-ridden, superstitious - because there are so many things that come along with being a goalie. There's something different about them, and it begins when they are young.

"I am plagued to this day with superstitions, like I'd do on game day, putting my left skate on first - I still always put my left shoe on first. I even put my kids' left shoes on first."

The NHL lockout has not been good for business, Myers said, and not just for him. "There has been a peripheral effect," he said. "People have stopped thinking about hockey, kids have stopped thinking about hockey, and everyone's business has suffered."

As long as there is some kind of hockey, though, there will be goalies. And as long as there are goalies, there will be a demand for masks, since they don't have any desire to suffer.