Terry Sawchuk – The face of a hockey goalie before masks became standard game equipment, 1966.

Image from preview.redd.it and submitted by iklegemma
image showing Terry Sawchuk – The face of a hockey goalie before masks became standard game equipment, 1966.

Spartan2470 on January 23rd, 2023 at 21:08 UTC »

According to here:

This face belongs to Terry Sawchuk, a 36-year-old goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Re-created here, by a professional make-up artist and a doctor, are some of the more than 400 stitches he had earned during 16 years in the National Hockey League.

Terry Sawchuk’s face was bashed over and over, but not all at one time. His wounds healed. The scars weren’t easily seen – except for a few of them. The re-creation of his injuries was done to help show the extent of his injuries over a span of years.

Sawchuk had sustained other injuries not shown here: a slashed eyeball requiring three stitches, a 70% loss of function in his right arm because 60 bone chips were removed from his elbow, and a permanent “sway-back” caused by continual bent-over posture.

This famous picture, ironically, didn’t tell half the story of Sawchuk, who was a very troubled man off the ice. He suffered a dislocated elbow playing rugby and hid it from his parents. The lack of medical attention caused his right arm to be half a foot shorter than his left, was extremely crooked, and caused him considerable pain for the rest of his life.

He was distant, angry, miserable with teammates and fans alike, kept to himself, and suffered from what we would now call depression or anxiety. In fear of losing his job, he kept injuries to himself and suffered quietly through many elbow problems, appendicitis, a collapsed lung, severe hand problems, broken foot, and too many cuts to count.

His playing style of an extremely low crouch left him with a permanently bent back and ruptured discs, which meant that he couldn’t sleep longer than 2 or 3 hours at a time.

This was all a bit much for Sawchuk to take, and he began to drink heavily. His life off the ice was generally a total uproar. Alcoholism and spousal abuse was the name of the game in the Sawchuk household. He had numerous affairs and eventually impregnated a woman outside of his marriage, before finally being divorced by his wife.

dab745 on January 23rd, 2023 at 22:00 UTC »

Puttin’ on the Ritz!!!

papadjeef on January 23rd, 2023 at 22:11 UTC »

Well actually the Doctor's name was Terry Sawchuk, this is a picture of Terry Sawchuk's monster.