"Rough, Very Rough"

Before the game, the raucous clamor of the hockey arena echoes through the cold concrete passages leading to the locker room. As they dress, the Chicago Black Hawks ignore the din and concentrate on their ritual of making relaxing small talk. But the Black Hawks can seldom find anything helpful to say to the wiry, whisper-voiced man whose square face is delicately crosshatched with scars. Sitting alone, Goalie Glenn Hall, 29, slowly straps on his 40 Ibs. of dark-brown leather pads and fights his regular pre-game battle with his nerves. Great drops of sweat roll down his cheeks, his chest heaves convulsively, and he may vomit. Says Hall: "There have been nights when I almost wished I was hurt so I didn't have to go out on the ice."

The wish is born of a dark despair that leaves Goalie Hall the moment he skates into action. Since coming up to the National Hockey League in 1955. Hall has not allowed himself the luxury of missing a single game because of injury; by last week he had run his record string of consecutive appearances to 394. Around the N.H.L. the season has been full of disaster for rival goalies, but Hall, better than ever, has helped Chicago to a seven-game winning streak. Last week he led the league with six shutouts. No one in hockey knows more than Glenn Hall about the violent art of stopping a rock-hard rubber puck flying at 100 m.p.h.

Quick Book. Hall's preparation for blocking a shot begins even before the opposing forwards hurtle toward him. He tries to anticipate how his Black Hawk defensemen will hit the attackers so he can guess who will wind up on the firing line. Once he picks out the potential shooter, Hall quickly recalls the "book" on that player's strengths and weaknesses; e.g., Montreal's Boom Boom Geoffrion is likely to aim a long shot at the right side of the net.

However accurate his guess, Hall keeps his eyes focused on the puck, never tries the controversial trick of watching a shooter's eyes for the flicker that tips off the direction of the shot. To shove him self quickly around the cage, Hall pulls on the goal posts or the bar across the top of the net. When a shot actually comes, Hall has no time to think. He picks off the puck with anything handy--his padded chest, a skate, his flat, stubby stick or his huge left mitt. Says he: "Afterwards you have time to figure out your mistakes."

Slap-Happy. Most N.H.L. goalies nurse fetishes; Hall is superstitious only about not becoming superstitious. "If I find myself putting on my right skate first before a game, I'll change to the left just so I don't get into the habit of putting on the right one first all the time." During a game. Hall frets most while the Black Hawks are on the attack ("I start fighting myself, particularly if the other goalie is making a lot of great saves"). He fusses constantly over uneven ice, since the slightest bump can deflect a puck over a stick and into the goal. Standing in the nets, Hall often seems to be racked with agonized sighs: "I breathe deeply trying to relax--a trick I learned from watching basketball players at the foul line."

Like all goalies, Hall feels that his main menace is the "slap shot," in which, a player hauls back his stick and swings viciously at the puck, sacrificing accuracy for blurring speed. "Now even my four-year-old son is using the slap shot," says Goalie Glenn Hall in disgust. "All this means the game of hockey is getting much faster. It's becoming rough on goalies, very rough. Makes you wonder why you're making your living being a clay pigeon."

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