Stan Mikita(1940-2018)

Popularizer of the hockey helmet after suffering a concussion.

I was still in a daze when I went out to take that face-off against a legend like [Jean] Beliveau, who was around 6-foot-5 and a towering presence on the ice. He had to outweigh me by 60 pounds. The face-off was in Montreal's end. I looked up at him from the circle and wound up staring at his belly button. That's how tall he was. My knees were shaking. My head was spinning. Somehow I got my stick down and managed to get the puck to our point man. Don't ask me who it was. I was too nervous to remember names. [on his first face-off in his first Blackhawks game, against Montreal]