Big Grizzly Energy with a Big Moog Influence
As a hockey fan growing up in the 80’s, I watched the transition away from the fiberglass face masks of old, to the helmet and cage combos like Mike Vernon wore, to the earliest version of the masks that are still in use today – and one of my favourite early paint jobs on these newer masks was Andy Moog of the Boston Bruins.
Moog’s open mouthed bear is an obvious inspiration for this grizzly bear mask, but I tried to keep from just straight up copying the original design, and gave the bear a more grizzly-specific appearance, so this mask can stand on it’s own, just like the goalie that wears it. For the backplate, the goalie wanted “The Wall” with black bricks and yellow grout; to connect the two ideas, the word “Wall” is meant to look like the scratch marks of a very large set of claws.
It was great to meet with this goalie in person for the final handoff, and I hope he has a great season with it!
