A fifteen-year-old Jacques Plante strikes a goaltending pose.

During his teenage years Plante was the best goalie in Shawinigan, at one point playing for five different teams at one time.

Plante joined the Quebec Citadels in the fall of 1947. Over the next two years he would establish himself as the top goaltending prospect in the province.

When he played for the Montreal Royals in the early 1950s, Plante’s performance and unique style of play brought him great notoriety in Quebec, as illustrated by the front cover of a popular magazine of the day.

After sharing the Canadiens’ goaltending duties for the previous two seasons, Plante finally became Montreal’s full-time goaltender in the fall of 1954.

Plante broke the cardinal rule of goaltending by leaving his net to play the puck. He also wasn’t above interfering with opposing forwards as Tod Sloan of the Leafs finds out.

Plante was obsessive about playing the angles. Here he comes out to challenge the Leafs’ Ron Stewart.

Toe Blake became the Canadiens’ head coach in the fall of 1955. While each man respected the other professionally, their personal relationship slowly disintegrated over time.

Plante waves to the crowd during a parade celebrating the Canadiens’ 1956 Stanley Cup win.

In the late 1950s Plante experimented with a variety of masks in practice. With his forehead exposed and because of its tendency to fog up, he never wore this mask designed by Delbert Louch in a game.

After taking a shot to the face from Andy Bathgate on November 1, 1959, Plante came back wearing a mask, forever changing the game of hockey.

Watching from the stands, John Pardon kept his own homemade shot chart on the night Plante debuted the mask. Above the left goal he has written “Plante out; puck in mouth.”

Plante (pictured here with Doug Harvey, centre) continued to wear the mask and was undefeated in the Canadiens’ next 11 games, allowing only 13 goals.