With a new NHL season comes many new goalie mask designs. Tenders have been traded to new teams and need to sport the home colors (or go with the mid-90's fave....the all-white lid), goalies need to re-invent their mojo (clearly filtered through their mask) or they've just grown tired of the same ol'.
For a guy like Steve Mason....I think there's a bit of all three.
Pushed away from Columbus last season, Steve is now the "starter" in Philly. Of course that's a very loose stature - especially seeing that their coach was recently canned.
Mason has always had some interesting designs (my fave being the one that included the Evil Dead skull). So with a fresh palette to build on, a new design was created.
Zombie Ben Franklin, zombie George Washington and zombie Betsy Ross. Why not.
With the un-dead being in fashion right now, I'm not surprised that Steve stayed with a theme that's he's gone with in the past. And even though Washington is mostly associated with Virginia (?) the Philly theme is strong.
I picked this mask as the one to rate not just because it was an interesting choice, but because there were some pics of the painting process used in some of the news stories.
In fact, the NHL went one further and created a video on the designing of Steve's new lid. Check it out...
Here are some more pics that show off some of the impressive detail in the mask.
Painted by Franny Drummond who runs PaintZoo, this mask is the first from PaintZoo that I've seen. I really like the stitching effect on the cheeks and forehead. The color is a little lacking...but then again it is a zombie mask.
The left side gives good symmetry with the right. The business of the mask is a little more than my liking (especially with what I see as a bit of a blast from the past with more bold, solid color masks making an appearance...am I right?)
The Flyers logo on top and "Mase" on the chin looks crisp. The name is similar to the way the players have their names on the backs of their jerseys. Sadly, that shouldn't be the highlight of a new mask.
The backplate continues the trend with a little "We The People" action.
"Horror without the horror movie" is what Steve asked for and I think he got just that. There's a great article at InGoalMag that has a few more killer pics of this new mask.
So at the end of the day, does the mask garner a good score? Not quite. While it is a nicely painted mask, the theme does feel a little redundant. I would have liked to have seen a little more orange in it. And the big one for me....from a distance you can't really appreciate the mask. That's no good.
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