The hockey world mourns the loss of former NHL and WHA goaltender Dave Dryden, who died Oct. 4 at the age of 81.

He was an excellent goalkeeper. But people may not know that Dryden was a true innovator. He pioneered the first cage combination goalie mask and was instrumental in the design of equipment.

Legendary mask maker Greg Harrison had a lot to share about Dryden’s contribution to the job.

“Dryden was showing up at Cooper (the hockey company now known as Bauer) when I was working there,” Harrison said. “He would come into the design department and say, ‘Why do we need all this leather on the glove and the blocker? We can use nylon and make it lighter. ”

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It was trial and error at the time. The nylon worked well in areas of the gear that didn’t come into contact with the ice very often. So Dryden, along with the gear designers at Cooper, tinkered around until they found the magic combination of weight and durability.

According to Harrison, many of Dryden’s ideas would find their way into Cooper’s product line next year. Retail buyers have directly benefited from Dryden’s curiosity.

« He was such a humble man, » Harrison said of his friend. « He never got credit. Not that I think he wanted it anyway.

Dryden, who retired after the 1979-80 season with the Edmonton Oilers, was the first to wear a padded practice jersey he sewed himself. More than a decade passed before the first padded training shirts were available in stores.

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And while it’s impossible to verify, Harrison believes Dryden was the first to attach arm guards to his chest protector. Goalies had always worn them separately before Dryden decided to pull out the needle and get creative.

I started playing goalie in the late 1980s with a two piece upper body kit. Yet Dryden had already laid the foundation for today’s chest and arm protectors years before. By the early 1990s, two-part protection was no longer available.

Dryden also left his mark on the design of the leggings.

« We made him a pair of pads and on the inside edges we put about a ⅝ piece of wood, » Harrison recalled of his time working at Cooper. “But we found it broken. So we used a rounded PVC plastic extrusion instead. You can see it when he played with Edmonton. The pads had a sharp edge inside. This stopped the puck from slipping through.

Most of the innovations offered by Dryden were not so visible. But it was impossible not to notice when, in 1979, as a member of the Edmonton Oilers, he took to the ice wearing a mask design that had never been seen before.

« Dave knew there were guys who were getting hurt weird, » Harrison said. “He made his own mask in Chicago with a square mouth hole. And then he made another one that was used in Buffalo. He painted that one gold. When Dave went to Edmonton, he grafted fiberglass on top to cover his head. Inside, you could see where the old mask ended and the new one began.

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« With the cage suit mask, how it happened, (Dryden) came to Cooper with an idea, » Harrison recalled. « He had the front half of an SK600 gamer’s helmet, and he had a metal cage that he welded himself. And he had the back of one of his other masks.

Harrison remembers it like it was yesterday. He was still working for Cooper at the time, but had a booming mask doing business on the side.

« Dryden said to Cooper, ‘I want a mask that fits like a fiberglass mask. But give me the eye protection of a cage. And he needs a back plate,” Harrison recalled. “Well, Cooper refused to do it. They said it had to be a helmet.

When her employer said no, Harrison saw an opportunity. “I told Dave, I’m going to design this,” Harrison fondly recalls. “He went to training camp in Europe with the Oilers. And he got nailed one of the first times he wore it. Dave said he felt nothing. He was hit right in the center of the mask and nothing happened.

Today, every goaltender in the NHL wears a combination cage mask. I spent my entire career after the age of 13 wearing one. If it hadn’t been for Dryden’s innovation, goalies might still be using a traditional helmet and cage combo.

I became a goalkeeper because of the equipment. And while I knew the evolution of our gear, I wasn’t sure who was responsible for it. It turns out that Dryden was involved in the development of just about everything.

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Thanks, David. Hockey wouldn’t be the same without you.

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