You may be familiar with Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th; he is, after all, one of the most iconic horror movie villiains ever, and his hockey mask is one of those timeless images in the culture that is universally recognized even by those who haven’t seen the films. With Halloween quickly approaching, today seems as good a day as any to dive deeper into the mythos of the spookiest hockey mask to ever exist.

The thing is, however, that the history of the hockey mask really underwhelms the myth. After a scuffle with Donnie in which his old pillowcase mask gets knocked off, Jason goes to pick up the mask and finds a goalie mask in a crate instead. That’s literally it. That’s objectively thin storytelling, and here at BarDown, our official editorial stance is that there’s just gotta be a better story behind Jason’s mask, because like, come on.
 

We came up with our own story for Jason, who, as it turns out in our heads, was a goalie -- hence the mask. A shocking expansion to the Friday the 13th cinematic universe you thought you knew.
 

Jason had hockey trophies!

Listen. We’re not just making (all of) this up. As Friday the 13th expert Dolfan from Yahoo! Answers points out, there are hockey trophies in Jason’s old bedroom. Jason was definitely a hockey player, presumably of some success or even greatness, which explains his attachment to the hockey mask. See, Yahoo! Answers always got the answers.

So who was Jason, the hockey player?
 

Jason was a goalie... a dirty goalie

Jason was a goalie, because he has to be.

But not just any goalie. No. From a young age, Jason had a mean streak, and it manifested while he was in net. Coaches may teach young hockey players to get prime position in front of the net, but Jason knew how to counter that game-plan, because he was an irritant. He struck fear into the hearts of the competition, always chopping the back of legs with his stick. His poke-checking game was on point, whether it was with his goalie stick, or... something sharper.

You know that scene in the Mighty Ducks when Coach Bombay tries to convince Charlie Conway to play dirty, but he refuses? Yeah, it's like the exact opposite of that. It was a struggle to get Jason through a game without picking up at least a minor slashing penalty.

No one dared to go digging after the whistle, because Jason would absolutely whale on anyone with the glove. He was vicious, not to be trifled with. Even with his reputation, some situations just can't be avoided...
 

A bad line change was the beginning of the Jason he became

He had a temper, sure, but Jason has always been good at what he does. With inconsistent goal support, Jason was always leaned on heavily by his team, and he always found a way to come through. As a hockey player, he got to playing at a high level, and in state finals, he put the team on his back.

It was a 0-0 game with two minutes left in the third period. Jason had stood on his head, making multiple highlight saves to preserve the score, but his team couldn’t muster enough offense, either. They went for a line change, but it was poorly timed and allowed a two-on-zero breakaway. Jason was good, but even he wasn’t good enough to stop the corner snipe in that scenario.

Jason’s team lost the championship, and Jason blamed the team for blowing the line change, for failing to provide any goal support at all, for not being as good as he was. Jason didn’t know how to reconcile his own greatness with his team’s failures; he tried teamwork, and it only let him down. Jason never played the sport again, and all of the passion he put into stopping the puck became anger, aimed at the world but only able to bottle up inside.

Killing was the only outlet Jason had, and when he found the hockey mask after killing Donnie, it was a callback to all of the pain that he endured from the game. He wears the mask as a reminder to himself, of how others had failed him and of how much hate he has for the world.

If only his team had never blown the line change. Practice your fundamentals, kids.