I started skating at the age 12 and wanted to play hockey as quickly as possible after that but it took three years before I was good enough to get onto a team.

     I played continually for 27 years in Canada, England, the Netherlands, Germany and a short spell in Switzerland. Work was the cause that I had to cut back on hockey and about the time I wanted to get back to hockey I had a bad car accident and can only play in a strictly NO-HITTING game as I broke my neck and suffered spinal injury which stopped me from playing golf for several years too. I'm fit enough to play golf again but one bad check could cause permanent paralasys so I can't risk some entheusiastic boarding me.  

     Mask making started when the masks were made from polyester and fiberglass - some 25 plus years ago for me when my swiss agent asked me to make some masks for him. That was the start of my mask carrier. Some of the materials I used were waste pieces of fiberglass left over from making hockey sticks. The masks were 1/4 inch thick and inspite of the low tech materials I didn't have one breakage. I changed the design of the goalie mask to accomodate it for field hockey and made all the custom made masks which only covered the front part of the face for the national team goalies back then. Later new rules forced us to start using a wire cage for the facial area and we stayed with that but if we had used the modern high-tech materials back then we probably wouldn't use wire cages today.  Due to high revenue products for another sport (field hockey) I stopped making hockey sticks and only started making them again about two years ago (shafts/1 piece and goal sticks).

     Some of my masks have been used in a gangster movie which is being released this year (2005) but it's in german. A fire in my factory destroyed all my newspaper cuttings so I am unable to show large numbers of photos but I do have a few from a swiss hockey magazine. I'll scan them as soon as possible (I don't have a scanner) and my neighbor's unit is temperaMENTAL.

      My work gives me so much pleasure that I go with excitement everyday and start at 4am in the summer/7am in the winter. I keep uptodate with any new developments in the resin/textile areas and try to incorporate them in my products as quickly as possible after a safe lab testing period. Mont Sherar has appointed me to make his new(er) Matrix mask - now to be called the StayTrix mask as another company has started to use the name Matrix which Mont introduced when he made the masks himself.

     The only North American pro that I know for sure who uses my masks is Dimitri Patzold of the Cleveland Barons/SJ Sharks. There are several pros in the swiss and german top leagues using my masks. I don't make work of trying to get NHL goalies to use my masks as it can be seen as a similar situation to a Michelin star for restaraunts - you work hard to get a star and if you loose it for whatever reason you loose a lot of your customers too and I don't want to be in that situation with masks.

     Top goalies are very fickle and it could be that if they loose a game on the nite of wearing a new mask the mask gets the blame - not the goalie or his team-mates. Plus the fact that bigger companies pay certain goalies to use their masks - this isn't covered in my price structure. Paying a goalie to use a mask is not an indication of quality. My pro goalie has told me of other pro goalies having breakages - something which doesn't happen with my products. After one season in the AHL his mask was as good as new and he was used for target practice for the Sharks. I prefer it when my customers have some knowledge of the materials I use and know they are not subsidising a pro goalie who earns enough to buy his own mask(s) anyway.

     As long as this profesion continues to give me the pleasure it does I will continue doing it.

TTYS,

Stace.

* Legal Disclaimer *

All masks made by the featured maskmakers are designed to protect the head and face from superficial injuries, they are not designed to protect from neck or spinal injuries. Ice hockey and other contact sports can be dangerous. No protective equipment will eliminate all injuries, If you wear a mask made by the featured maskmakers when you play hockey it is implied that you accept the risk of injury.

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