Lester Patrick’s career as a goaltender in the NHL is as famous a half-hour as you’ll find in the annals of NHL playoff history. Maybe you recall the story: in April of 1928, when the New York Rangers were battling the Maroons in Montreal in the Finals, Nels Stewart from the home team hoisted a backhand at the New York net. Rangers’ goaltender Lorne Chabot stopped it, but at a painful cost: the puck caught him (and I quote, from the next day’s Toronto Globe) full in the left eye. Chabot went to hospital, where doctors diagnosed hemorrhages of the anterior and posterior chambers of said eye. His replacement, back at the Forum? A couple of able-bodied goaltenders happened to be in the building, including the Ottawa Senators’ Alec Connell, but Maroons refused to agree that either of them should be allowed to step into the breach — it just wasn’t fair, they felt.

So Patrick suited up. Born on this date in 1883 (it was a Monday then, too), Patrick was a hockey colossus, one of the game’s most influential figures, a builder of leagues and rinks, inventor (along with his brother Frank) of the blueline and forward pass and the penalty shot, booster of women’s hockey. Now coach and GM of the second-year Rangers, Patrick had been a truly outstanding player in his day, one of the greats of hockey’s early era — which is to say, a while back. In 1906 and again in ’07, playing both on defence and at rover, he led the Montreal Wanderers to successive Stanley Cup championships. In subsequent years he’d starred for Renfrew’s Creamery Kings and the Seattle Metropolitans, the Spokane Canaries, and Victoria’s Aristocrats. He’d played regularly for another Victoria team, the Cougars, as recently as 1926. At the end of the 1926-27, with the Ranger roster thinned by injuries, he’d suited himself up for a single game on defence, making his NHL debut at the age of 43. The only statistic he registered was a minor penalty: two minutes for tripping.

A year later, another year older, Patrick returned to the ice for his NHL swan song. It’s worth noting (if not entirely a surprise) that this wasn’t his first attempt at preventing pucks from passing him by: Patrick had played some emergency goal for both the Wanderers and the Aristocrats, when the moment called, though he’d never yet been credited with a win of his own.

Standing in Chabot’s stead in 1928, making do with his equipment, Patrick deterred all but one of the 18 shots he faced — Nels Stewart was the lone Maroon to solve him, snapping in a rebound to tie the game after New York’s Bill Cook put the Rangers ahead. Frank Boucher’s overtime goal eventually gave New York — and Patrick — the win, paving the way for Rangers’ eventual triumph: they claimed their first Stanley Cup in five games.

Patrick went back to coaching after his game-two debut, with the Rangers calling on the league back-up, Joe Miller, to finish the job in the nets. He did so despite suffering a serious cut on the head in the final game, courtesy of Hooley Smith’s skate. As for Lester Patrick, he remains to this day the oldest player to have skated in the Stanley Cup finals. He died in 1960, aged 76.