The man behind the masks Winnipeg airbrush artist brings his creative touch into the goalie’s crease By: David Sanderson Posted: 5:10 PM CDT Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023

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This article was published 26/10/2023 (1057 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Talk about striking fear into the opposition.

Ahead of Halloween, Tony Bage, an airbrush artist whose area of expertise is custom-painted hockey goaltender masks, was tasked with producing a mask boasting blood-curdling images of three horror-movie icons; namely, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Krueger, Child’s Play’s Chucky and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees.

Bage wasn’t overly surprised by the request, particularly the inclusion of the Jason character, who, over the course of a dozen Friday the 13th films, stabbed, strangled, electrocuted and/or decapitated over 200 victims, while sporting an ominous-looking goalie mask.

Still, the father of two was somewhat taken aback when his contact dropped the to-be-painted piece of equipment off at his Garden City home, and it turned out to be a size small.

“The first thing out of my mouth was ‘This is a kid’s mask; who’s it for, exactly?’” says Bage, who, since 2013, has marketed his designs under the banner Wicked Goalie.

“When he told me it was for his eight-year-old I couldn’t stop laughing. I was like ‘Ooh, you are a bad, bad parent.’”

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Because his father was a goalie, Bage, 52, chose to play that position, too, when he joined a local beer-league team, the Brooklyn Bruins, at age 18.

He needed a mask, of course, and his dad obligingly lent him his — a face-hugging model with open eye holes that closely resembled the sort worn by National Hockey League goalies in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

It served its purpose, except when more protective hybrid-style masks — ones that combined a wraparound fibreglass shell with a metal wire cage covering a cut-out area in the middle — came along in the late 1980s, he decided to make the switch.

Problem was, hybrid masks were so new to the market they were difficult to net at the amateur level.

Undaunted, Bage, a MacGyver-type who pulled straight As in shops class while attending Sisler High School, spent a couple of weeks fashioning his own.

When it was completed, he added a few rudimentary stripes of paint, to match his team’s colours.

Faster than you can say “he shoots, he scores,” fellow goalies were approaching Bage as he was skating off the ice at the end of games, to ask where he got his cage.

Upon learning it was his own creation, they immediately placed an order for something similar for themselves, before even inquiring “how much?”

Initially, Bage relied on a conventional paint brush to add accents such as a logo or jersey number.

But as more and more people expressed an interest in having an image of a family pet, loved one or preferred rock band somewhere on their mask, he turned to his buddy Darryl Szydlik, who was running a small T-shirt company, to teach him the ins and outs of airbrushing.

Over time, as it became easier to buy a hybrid-style mask at the retail level, orders for his custom-made models began to wane, until they ceased completely. On the other hand, demand for his ever-developing skill with an airbrush kit grew exponentially.

“By the mid-’90s, goalies in the NHL were really starting to push the envelope, in terms of what they were having painted on their masks,” says Bage, who, in his “real” life, teaches welding at Tec Voc High School.

“Around then, I started putting up posters in different rinks, advertising my services. Overnight, I was getting calls like crazy, and it hasn’t slowed down much in — what’s it been? — close to 30 years.”

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Bage compares his line of work to that of a tattoo artist.

Initially, he’ll meet with a client — be it an adult or a child and their parent(s) — to discuss what they want the end-result to look like.

Using Photoshop, they’ll jointly determine where the various images will go, while remaining cognizant of the dozen or so openings that are pre-cut into a mask, to provide ventilation.

He smiles, saying you wouldn’t want to spell out a team name, for example, only to realize too late there’s a gaping hole where one of the letters was supposed to land.

Next, he’ll sand the mask’s outer surface or, if he’s redoing a previous job, strip away the old paint.

Following that, he uses a pencil to sketch everything out — that’s probably the most painstaking part of the process, he notes — before plugging in his compressor and getting down to business, almost always to a Bruce Springsteen-heavy soundtrack.

“It changes with every mask, pretty much,” he replies, when asked if there’s a particular section — the chin or forehead, for example — where he prefers to start.

“Like anything else of an artistic nature, some (masks) come together faster than others. But if everything’s going smoothly, and I’m feeling super inspired, I can generally blast one out in the space of a day.”

To date, Bage has fielded orders from puck-stoppers across the continent.

He’s painted three masks for Lac du Bonnet’s Ethan Simcoe, who plays goal for the Coquitlam Express of the British Columbia Hockey League. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a mask for a person in northern Manitoba who wants an image of a bear claw, his clan’s symbol, displayed prominently.

And although he hasn’t heard from the agents of any present NHLers — “yet,” he stresses — a former big-league goalie did reach out, for a special project.

A few years ago, Winnipegger George Maneluk, who won a Calder Cup in 1994 as a member of the AHL’s Springfield franchise, and who suited up for four games with the New York Islanders during the 1991-92 NHL campaign, contacted Bage to restore one of his old masks.

“He wanted the Islanders crest front and centre, surrounded by the crests of other teams he played for — the Louisiana IceGators, the Wichita Thunder… the list went on and on,” Bage says.

“He was so pleased with how it turned out that he said he was going to tell his kids ‘that (mask) goes into the coffin with me, when I kick.’”

Bage, who now paints as many masks for females as males and who was enlisted by the Winnipeg Jets last season to airbrush mini-sticks for an in-game promotion, laughs when the topic of his own piece of protective gear is raised.

Unfortunately not, he shakes his head, when it’s opined that his mask must be a true work of art — a veritable Vincent Van Goal, if you will. (No, no; a Puckasso!)

“I didn’t have a paint job on my own mask for eight years, because I was busy painting everyone else’s masks,” he says.

“It wasn’t until my girlfriend forced me to paint my own, because she was tired of not seeing me wearing my own work.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca