Quick nabs gold for the U.S. with mask design
Icethetics voters have spoken. Jonathan Quick had the best goalie mask at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Definitively.
Quick's design bested 24 other netminders' in the 2014 Men's Olympic Goalie Mask Tournament. Quick joins Canada's Shannon Szabados who earned gold in the women's tourney.
The men's tournament ended Sunday after 18 days and more than 14,000 votes. Quick defeated Henrik Lundqvist with 55% of votes. Just as in Sochi, the Swedes have to settle for silver.
The dark horse, in my opinion, was Latvia's Edgars Masalskis who seemingly came out of nowhere to claim bronze against Jonas Hiller with a substantial 59%.
In fact, both Latvian goalie masks performed surprisingly well in this tournament. Masalskis faced fellow countryman Kristers Gudlevskis in a patriotic showdown in the quarterfinals.
Among those I was surprised to see eliminated so early were Tuukka Rask, Roberto Luongo and the two Norwegian netminders, Lars Haugen and Lars Volden.
Click bracket to enlarge.
Poll Results
The slideshow above celebrates Quick's victory by giving us a look at a few more angles of his mask — which was designed by Steve Nash of EyeCandyAir. Nash even made some Vine videos showing the creation of the mask.
Just because the tournament is over doesn't mean there's nothing left to vote on. I'm kind of curious to see which gold medalist you like better. Also, do you prefer Quick's USA mask to his Kings mask? Vote in the two polls below.
And because this post hasn't been jam-packed enough, I wanted to leave you with one more image gallery. Eleven of the goalies that went to Sochi never played in a game so their masks weren't included in our tournament.
Still, I'm sure we'd all love to get a look at them. To that end, I did a little digging.
Unused Olympic Goalie Masks
Unfortunately, I was unable to track down photos of masks belonging to Rene Swette (Austria), Andrej Hocevar (Slovenia) or Tobias Stephan (Switzerland). If you spot any, please let me know so I can expand the slideshow.
Which of these unused Olympic masks is your favorite? Any you think could've competed with Quick for gold? Let us all know in the comments.