Former Blackhawks goalie Glenn Hall is widely credited as the innovator of the butterfly position for goaltending.
Hall, an instrumental member of the Blackhawks’ 1961 Stanley Cup championship team, used the butterfly to snag two Vezina trophies as a Hawk and achieve a feat that will never be matched. His record of 502 consecutive NHL starts — without a mask — is among the most impressive accomplishments in the history of sports.
"Mr. Goalie", as Glenn came to be called, began the streak with the Detroit Red Wings, but saw the vast majority of it through with Chicago. It extends to 552 games if you count playoff contests.
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The butterfly position can be seen today in nets at all levels. Basically, it's when a goalie drops down to their knees and spreads their pads to cover the bottom of the net.
“It came to be out of necessity," Glenn's son Pat told NBC Sports Chicago in December. “If you stood up, you thought maybe you were keeping away from the puck. The butterfly crouched you down, so your head came down more into danger, at a time when their chest protectors were laughable and they didn’t have masks. To bring your head down deeper into the action seems a little crazy.
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"But Dad said when he couldn’t see the puck, if he sent his legs out toward the post, that brought him down and he was finding the puck where he couldn’t if he was just standing up. He would tell you too that what it really allowed was that the edges of his skates were so important when he was in a butterfly position because if he needed to move, if he wanted to shoot across to the left, he would dig his right skate into the ice and just thrust off. So he had his edges kind of ready to move him around and he was down and he was just covering corners that you can’t cover if you’re standing straight up. He realized that there was a five-hole that got created by doing that, but there were ways around that, to cover that."
Back when Hall introduced the position, there weren’t any goalie coaches. He drew a lot of criticism from head coaches around the league who said it wouldn’t last.
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Glenn wasn’t a fan of flopping or stacking pads to make a save, “Once you stack your pads, you’re useless,” he'd say.
The butterfly played to Mr. Goalie's strengths. “His reflexes and eyesight is what I think made him exceptional,” Pat said.
Cementing a legacy as one of the greatest goalies to ever take a net in the NHL, Hall and his position proved the doubters wrong.