Joseph Jacques Omer Plante (French pronunciation: [ʒɑk plɑ̃t]; January 17, 1929 – February 27, 1986) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. During a career as a goaltender lasting from 1947 to 1975, he was considered to be one of the most important innovators in hockey. He played for the Montreal Canadiens from 1953 to 1963; during his tenure, the team won the Stanley Cup six times, including five consecutive wins. In 2017 Plante was named one of the "100 Greatest NHL Players" in history.
Plante retired in 1965 but was persuaded to return to the National Hockey League to play for the expansion St. Louis Blues in 1968. He was later traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1970 and to the Boston Bruins in 1973. He joined the World Hockey Association as a coach and general manager for the Quebec Nordiques in 1973–74. He then played goal for the Edmonton Oilers in 1974–75, ending his professional career with that team.
Plante was the first NHL goaltender to wear a goaltender mask in regulation play on a regular basis. He developed and tested many versions of the mask (including the forerunner of today's mask/helmet combination) with the assistance of other experts. Plante was the first NHL goaltender to regularly play the puck outside his crease in support of his team's defencemen, and he often instructed his teammates from behind the play. Plante was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1978, was chosen as the goaltender of the Canadiens' "dream team" in 1985, and was inducted into the Quebec Sports Pantheon in 1994. The Montreal Canadiens retired Plante's jersey, #1, the following year. Plante ranks seventh among NHL goalies for all-time career wins with 437.
Plante was born on a farm near Notre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, in Mauricie, Quebec, on January 17, 1929, the first of 11 children born to Palma and Xavier Plante. The family moved to Shawinigan Falls, where his father worked in one of the local factories. In 1932, Plante began to play hockey, skateless and with a tennis ball, using a goaltender's hockey stick his father had carved from a tree root. When he was five years old, Plante fell off a ladder and broke his hand. The fracture failed to heal properly and affected his playing style during his early hockey career; he underwent successful corrective surgery as an adult. Plante suffered from asthma starting in early childhood. This prevented him from skating for extended periods, so he gravitated to playing goaltender. As his playing progressed, Jacques received his first regulation goaltender's stick for Christmas of 1936. His father made Plante's first pads by stuffing potato sacks and reinforcing them with wooden panels. As a child, Plante played hockey outdoors in the bitterly cold Quebec winters. His mother taught him how to knit his own tuques to protect him from the cold. Plante continued knitting and embroidering throughout his life and wore his hand-knitted tuques while playing and practicing until entering the National Hockey League (NHL).
Plante's first foray into organized hockey came at age 12. He was watching his school's team practice when the coach ordered the goaltender off the ice after a heated argument over his play, and Plante asked to replace him. The coach permitted him to play since there was no other available goaltender; it was quickly apparent that Plante could hold his own, despite the other players being many years older than he was. He impressed the coach and stayed on as the team's number-one goaltender.
Two years later, Plante was playing for five different teams—the local factory team, and teams in the midget, juvenile, junior, and intermediate categories. Plante demanded a salary from the factory team's coach after his father told him that the other players were being paid because they were company employees. The coach paid Plante 50 cents per game to retain him and maintain the team's popularity. Afterwards, Plante began to receive various offers from other teams; he was offered $80 per week—a considerable sum in those days—to play for a team in England, and a similar offer to play for the Providence Reds of the American Hockey League. Plante passed them up because his parents wanted him to finish high school. He graduated with top honours in 1947. Upon graduation, he took a job as a clerk in a Shawinigan factory. A few weeks later, the Quebec Citadels offered Plante $85 per week to play for them; he accepted, marking the beginning of his professional career.
In 1949, he married Jacqueline Gagné; they had two sons, Michel and Richard.
Jacques joined the Quebec Citadelles in 1947. While playing for Quebec, Plante started to play the puck outside his crease, a technique he developed when he recognized that the team's defense was performing poorly. Fans found Plante's unconventional playing style to be exciting, but it angered his managers, who believed that a goaltender should stay in the net and let his players recover the puck. Plante had concluded that as long as he was in control of the puck, the opponents could not shoot it at him – this is now standard practice for goaltenders. The same season, the Citadelles beat the Montreal Junior Canadiens in the league finals, with Plante being named the most valuable player on his team. The Montreal Canadiens' general manager, Frank J. Selke, became interested in acquiring Plante as a member of the team. In 1948, Plante received an invitation to the Canadiens' training camp. On August 17, 1949, Selke offered Plante a contract. Plante played for Montreal's affiliate Royal Montreal Hockey Club, earning $4,500 for the season, and an extra $500 for practicing with the Canadiens.
In January 1953, Plante was called up to play for the Canadiens. Bill Durnan, the goaltender who played for Montreal when Plante first began, had retired in 1950, and Gerry McNeil, their top goaltender, had fractured his jaw. Plante played three games, but in that short time, he generated controversy. Coach Dick Irvin Sr. did not wish his players to stand out by any addition to their regular uniforms. Plante always wore one of his tuques while playing hockey, and after an argument with Irvin, all of Plante's tuques had vanished from the Montreal locker room. Even without his good luck charm, Plante gave up only four goals in the three games he played, all of them wins.
Later during the 1952–53 NHL season, Plante played in the playoffs against the Chicago Black Hawks. He won his first playoff game with a shutout. Montreal won that series and eventually, the Stanley Cup, and Plante's name was engraved on the Cup for the first time.
At the beginning of 1953, McNeil was still the starting goaltender for the Canadiens. Selke assigned Plante to the Buffalo Bisons of the American Hockey League so fans in the United States would get to know him. Plante was instantly successful; Fred Hunt, the general manager of the Bisons, told Kenny Reardon, Montreal's recruiting manager, "he's [Plante] the biggest attraction since the good old days of Terry Sawchuk."
By the end of the 1953–54 season, Plante was well-entrenched within the NHL. In the spring of 1954, he underwent surgery to correct his left hand, which he had broken in his childhood. He could not move his hand well enough to catch high shots and compensated by using the rest of his body. The operation was successful.
On February 12, 1954, Plante was called up to the Canadiens and established himself as their starting goaltender – he did not return to the minor leagues for many years. Plante was the Canadiens' number one goaltender at the beginning of the 1954–55 NHL season. On March 13, 1955, with only four games left in the season, an on-ice brawl resulted in the suspension of Montreal's leading scorer, Maurice Richard, for the rest of the season and the playoffs. Four nights later, playing in Montreal in front of an angry crowd, Plante was witness to the riot that followed. The Canadiens subsequently lost to the Detroit Red Wings in the finals.
For the 1955–56 season, Plante was the unchallenged starting goaltender of the Canadiens; Gerry McNeil had not played the previous season and was sent to the Montreal Royals. Charlie Hodge, Plante's backup the previous season, was sent to the Seattle Americans, a Canadiens' farm team.