The date was Nov. 1, 1959.
Bobby Darin's 'Mack the Knife' was topping the pop charts, moviegoers were flocking to theatres to see Charlton Heston's chariot race in Ben Hur, a band of guerilla rebels had managed to overthrow the government of Cuba and had placed a charismatic, young man named Fidel Castro in charge and the New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens were engaged it what appeared to be a meaningless early season game at Madison Square Garden.
The game was certainly not meaningless to Rangers forward and reigning Hart Trophy winner Andy Bathgate - who had a score to settle with Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante.
"I didn't dislike him," Bathgate told TSN's James Duthie, "but I didn't like when the Montreal Canadiens beat you - especially at home. It would be 5-1 or 6-2 or something and Jacques would always take the goal stick and go like (this) after the game, just sort of rub it in."
Bathgate was also sour about a run in with Plante a couple of weeks earlier when the Habs' wandering goaltender nearly put Bathgate in the hospital.
"The puck was dumped in and it wasn't a hard shot," Batgate recalled. "I thought I could beat him to the puck but all this was happening in split seconds. And Jacques came out the right side and he saw that I was coming, I was right on him, and he turned around and saw me and he gave me a poke-check and I went head first into the boards. I wasn't prepared for that and my head was right straight-on, and I got it turned enough that I cut my ear and I cut my face a little bit. What he did to me was not called for. I thought: "How do you show him, 'Hey, big boy, you got to even things up here. You want to play that game? I had better straighten it out.'"
While Bobby Thompson launched the ‘shot heard round the World' off Ralph Branca in 1951, Bathgate - vowing revenge for Plante's earlier transgression - unloaded a shot that changed the hockey world.
"I came down the left wing, and Jacques used to sort of sit with his ass in the net and his head sticking out, ready to go across," Bathgate remembers. "I just gave him a fairly good wrist shot. I was trying to hit him somewhere where he would remember me and, boom, I nailed him. It wasn't a hard shot. If I had really wanted to shoot it hard, I could have broken his jaw, but he bled good."
Plante headed straight to the dressing room for repairs. His nose was broken and he required stitches, but he desperately wanted to return to the game. And he wanted to do it under one condition - he would be allowed to wear a crude, homemade mask that he had been experimenting with at practice.
Canadiens head coach Toe Blake would have none of it and was furious at Plante for even making the suggestion, but his hands were tied as there was no backup to take over for Plante. Blake eventually relented, but told Plante that he would lose the mask as soon as his injuries healed.
After a 21-minute delay, Plante emerged from the dressing room sporting his new facial protection and forever changed the history of goaltending. For those on the ice, the revelation was shocking.
"He had to go to his own dressing room and then all of a sudden he came out with this mask on," recalled Bathgate.
"And we all looked at each other and said, ‘What is this?'"
The Canadiens rallied behind their masked goaltender and won the game 3-1. Blake was forced to admit that perhaps a masked netminder could benefit his team over the long run. The Canadiens followed that memorable victory over the Rangers with a lengthy unbeaten streak and the game was forever changed.
While neither Plante nor Bathgate could have predicted the impact of their encounter on that fateful night, the influence is still felt to this day as goaltenders are now seemingly impervious to injuries of this type due to advances in technology. For Bathgate, it was just part of the game that he loved and while he considered Plante his rival, he knew there were no hard feelings.
"I said, 'Jacques, you know what you did to me could have ended my career and I just wanted you to know that I was evening it up,'" he recalled. "And he said, 'I know - It's all in the game, it's all in the game."