Like snowflakes and fingerprints, all goaltenders are different.
That also applies to how they choose to express themselves through the masks that they wear.
From a simplistic to ornate design, one bursting with color or kept a generic white, a goaltender’s mask is a peek into their personality. Unlike the skaters on their team who all wear identical helmets, netminders get to express themselves by what covers their heads and face as they take on enemy shots, stray sticks and elbows, and the like.
It shouldn’t surprise you, then, that this year’s North Shore boys high school goaltenders are all over the map when it comes to their helmets.
Beverly’s Ty Chin-Aleong, a junior who is currently tied for the area lead in victories (8), went with a natural color scheme: his school’s iconic orange-and-black. The top of his helmet features a sticker with a roaring panther, who has teeth bared and his tongue out. His last name is also in sticker form on the front where his chin would be.
It’s the back of Chin-Aleong’s helmet that truly makes it a special mask, however. He has ‘Thank You Mom & Dad’ in the center, surrounded by the names of all the coaches who have helped him along his hockey journey.
There’s also a ‘#Family’ under the message to his parents, an it-takes-a-village unifying message.
“I wanted to do something special when I came here from Hamilton-Wenham (after his eighth grade season),” said Chin-Aleong, whose family lives in Hamilton. “It’s a way for me to thank all the people who helped me to get where I am. It’s a comfortable helmet that’s been good luck to me.”
A goaltender for the last 10 years, Evan Morey of Danvers might have the newest mask of all the area keepers.
Having come back to his hometown Danvers High after spending time at Bishop Fenwick, Morey wanted to have something special for this, his senior season tending goal. He enlisted the help of Ron Slater (“he’s @maskpainter on Instagram, you gotta check him out,” said Morey) to paint him specific to his new squad — and was thrilled with the end result.
The mask features three shades of blue associated with Danvers High (royal blue, baby blue and navy blue) as well as silver chrome and white. The Falcons’ school logo is featured on one side, with a realistic falcon on the other. The wordmark ‘Falcons’ is under both designs.
Morey’s last name is on the front, also in the familiar chin position. “I took inspiration from Joonas Korpisalo, the Bruins’ goaltender, and had my name painted across the chin similar to his,” he said.
The back of the helmet features E-$ (i.e., ‘E-money’), a nickname bestowed upon him by his friends and former teammates at Fenwick. He kept that as a way to remember his time with the Crusaders, he said.
“It originally was originally going to be painted for Bishop Fenwick,” noted Morey, “but luckily Ron hadn’t started painting when we asked him to change the design.”
Logan Prifti of Essex Tech has a mask that has significant meaning to him and his family.
The 16-year-old junior, whose surname means ‘priest’ in Albanian, his native language. With that knowledge as inspiration, he has a forest green cross on the forehead of his mask, a strong contrast against the bright white of the helmet himself. On his backplate, Prifti wears both American and Albanian flag stickers.
Using the website www.shutoutdesigns.com, Prifti gets different vinyl stickers each year to place on his helmet.
“In some of the green parts of my helmet, there’s a lightning pattern,” Prifti, who has been a goaltender for six seasons and worn his current mask for the last year, said. “Along with looking sick, it represents my favorite goaltender growing up: Andrei Vasilevskiy. He plays for the Tampa Bay Lightning, so I added lightning into the helmet.
“This year was my first year adding wings on the side instead of our Hawks logo,” he added. “I decided to bring it back because my first-ever helmet had the same wings, but red for the North Shore Wings.”
In addition a large number 35 on his black plate, he has ‘Essex Tech’ written in script; the same writing is on the front of his mask under the cross.
Prifti is also cognizant when he sees something unique on another keeper’s mask.
“I’m not going out and looking for it, but when I notice it I appreciate it,” he said. “I really liked how Trey Marrone of Gloucester added a thing for Chris (Dailey, his former teammate who tragically passed away last summer).”
Teagan Moreau, the senior in Essex Tech’s goaltending split with Prifti, took a different approach. His is a plain white mask with the Hawks’ official blue and green mascot stickers … and electrical tape put on by his father.
“He’s rather decorate it for cheap,” the 18-year-old Moreau said of his two-year old mask with a chuckle.
What he has certainly fits the description of what he’d term a perfect mask: “Something that looks good, fits with your gear/jersey color, and has some personal touch to it.”
The third goaltender in the Essex Tech program, junior Dillon Perry, has worked on his craft for 12 years. He also has a white mask with large “dueling Hawks” designs on each side. It is modeled, he said, after Hockey Hall of Famer Ed Belfour’s classic eagle mask.
Bishop Fenwick puckstopper Jackson Phillips has also been in the crease for the last dozen years, and worn his current mask for the last four. He’s also chosen a plain white look, although his is furnished with green shamrocks stickers — a tribute to the North Shore Shamrocks he’s spent a good part of his hockey-playing life suiting up for.
“My dangler is attached with a lace from my father that has stayed with me throughout all my various masks,” Phillips added.
A clean white Bauer helmet with a clear neck guard is the preferred mask of Pingree senior Von Larson. Like his fellow goalkeepers, though, he has a few special stickers that hold deep meaning for him.
“The purple sticker is for my former teammate Kyle, who battled cancer when I was 10 while I was playing for the Boston Jr. Rangers,” Larson, 17, said. “On the back plate I have two more stickers: one of the Pingree ‘P’ and another of the North Shore Wings, my half-season team for the last two seasons. Both teams have been extremely valuable to me in my growth as both a hockey player and a young adult.
“I like being able to carry them with me throughout the years, peeling them off old masks and reapplying them to new ones,” Larson continued. “There’s no replacing the “Hockey Fights Cancer” purple sticker for my teammate Kyle; that’s been with me through my past three helmets, reminding me every day that hockey is bigger than just a game or yourself. Hockey is about the bonds you build with teammates, opponents, and coaches over the years while playing a game you love.”
Another unsophisticated, yet classic looking mask belongs to Marblehead senior Bowden Laramie. The 18-year-old is another local goalie who chooses to wear a white mask (CCM) model; what makes his different is the solid red stripe, outlined by two black stripes, of electrical tape that runs down the middle of his mask to the front. The same color scheme is on his chin.
There is also a red block ‘M’ outlined in black with ‘Headers’ going across it on both sides of his helmet, not on but near the back plate. Inside the M are a pair of initials to fallen former Marblehead icemen: ‘SC’ for Sam Cioffi and ‘RF’ for Ryan Fader. Again, each of his teammates dons the similar stickers.
But there’s something that makes Laramie’s mask extra special. Call it a family talisman.
“I have a little strip that I cut off of my mother’s lucky scarf that she wore when she competed in a women’s figure skating competition held in Lake Placid, N.Y.,” he said. “I put this in my helmet recently. I first put it in my bag back in my sophomore year for good luck before we played in the (Division 3) state championship at TD Garden.
“Since we won the game that year, I thought it would bring some magic to our team this year if I put a little bit of it in my helmet. I did this before we played Danvers. At that time we had not won a game yet and I was searching for any sort of thing to buy a win. Since it worked against Danvers, I’ve kept it in there.”
Laramie considered painting his mask before this season, saying it would’ve been heavily influenced by the buckets worn by Jeremy Swayman and former goaltender Tuukka Rask, two of his favorite Bruins.
A Swampscott resident on the co-operative Peabody/Saugus/Swampscott team, Dom Pappalardo kept the mask he originally wore with his hometown Big Blue when his program morphed into the Tanners’ squad three years ago.
The 17-year-old has a dark blue and white custom mask that uses the old ‘Big Blue Hockey’ logo, with a puck underneath that. There is a jagged lightning design at the top, with white-and-blue alternating in a ‘ripped’ fashion down the sides of the helmet. Pappalardo’s uniform number, 33, is painted a bold blue on the chin.
Just as their goals against averages and save percentages vary, so do the headwear that are local netminders sport each time they hit the ice and stand in front of the netting and between the two red pipes.
“I believe there’s no such thing as a perfect goalie mask,” Essex Tech’s Prifti stated. “Everyone’s helmet is unique and personalized in its own way, so I don’t think there could be a perfect one.
“As long as it offers good protection for your head, you can’t have a bad helmet.”
The Blue Line Report, a column on North Shore high school boys hockey, appears each Wednesday in The Salem News during the winter sports season. Contact Phil Stacey at pstacey@salemnews.com and follow him on X at PhilStacey_SN