In an era when goaltenders were a repressed minority and didn’t go into battle decked out like Bibenbum, the Michelin Man, former Vancouver Canucks draft pick Glen Hanlon recorded 13 shutouts in his NHL career. The first, a 1-0 Canucks’ win, came on November 1, 1978, when the Blackhawks went by Black Hawks and Chicago Stadium, razed in 1995, was known as the “Madhouse on Madison.”
Everybody knows that Hanlon gave up Wayne Gretzky’s first NHL goal almost a year later — Oct, 14, 1979. But the glow of that night in Chicago — defeating Black Hawks’ goalie Tony Esposito, in his only brush with legendary defenceman Bobby Orr (who retired that same month) — remains vivid.