Almost ten years after the first National Hockey League goalie began to regularly wear a mask, a University of New Brunswick player was the first at his school to make the move to protect his face and now the mask and the story behind it are about to go on display.

In the 1960s, Frank Morrison was in nets for the University of New Brunswick Varsity Reds, called the Red Devils at the time.

“Most of us started playing goalie by default,” says Morrison. “We were usually the smallest guy in the community, perhaps the poorest skater and nobody else really wanted to go in.”

You also had to be one of the bravest players, because at that time few goalies wore masks. Morrison says he took his share of head shots.

“I can recall four or five,” says Morrison. “The most memorable was during the spring playoffs at UNB and I broke my nose, but I've got scars under my right eye and my chin and forehead.”

Such injuries were part of the game for goalies of that time, however that was slowly changing.

In 1959, Jacques Plante got hit in the face by a slap shot from Andy Bathgate in a game at Madison Square Gardens in New York. Plante went to the locker room to get stitches and returned to the ice wearing a goalie mask.

Eight years later, Morrison made the move to mask up in his third year at UNB, at the encouragement of team captain Donnie McIntrye. McIntrye made the mask for Morrison because he was tired of seeing his goalie get hurt.

It turned out to be the first goalie mask worn at the University of New Brunswick.

“It was minimal protection, but better than no mask obviously,” says Morrison. “The big thing was to get the eyes just right so we take a file and file them out and make them bigger and as you'll see they were much, much too big for safety and they're fit close to your face.”

Over the years Morrison's mask began to collect dust, until one day a former UNB teammate suggested he donate it back to the university.

“If you look at this mask, it really comes from a time when the game of hockey was evolving. You would not see a mask like this in use today,” says Andy Campbell, with the UNB Varsity Reds.

Morrison donated the mask to the university in memory of his former coach Bill MacGillivray, who passed away in 1997.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Jonathan MacInnis