Seth Martin

Canadian goaltender Seth Martin got his start in ice hockey as a member of the Lethbridge Junior Sons of the Western Canada Junior Hockey League, with whom he played from 1950 through 1953. In the latter year he joined the Trail Smoke Eaters of the Western International Hockey League and, aside from brief appearances with several other teams, stayed with them through 1962. In 1961 he was a runner-up for the Allan Cup, a trophy given annually to the Canadian senior amateur men’s ice hockey champions, and was selected with the rest of his squad to represent his nation at that year’s World Championships. The Trail Eaters captured the title, the nation’s last with an amateur squad and until 1994, and Martin was honored as the tournament’s best goaltender in addition to being named to the All-World All-Star Team. This was the start of a successful international career that saw four more appearances at the World Championships (1963, 1964, 1966, and 1967, the latter two of which netted him bronze medals), three more honors as best goaltender (1963, 1964, and 1966), two more selections for the All-World All-Stars (1964 and 1966), and a trip to the 1964 Winter Olympics, where Canada finished in a controversial fourth place. He was also noted as the first goaltender to wear a mask in international competition.

Domestically, Martin skated for several teams in the WIHL for the remainder of his career, including the Rossland Warriors (for whom he would later become general manager), the Nelson Maple Leafs, the Kimberley Dynamiters, and the Spokane Jets, with whom he played his final full season in 1969-1970, the year that they became the first American team to win the Allan Cup. During the 1967-1968 season he played 32 games with the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League and made the finals for the Stanley Cup but, believing that he would never appear in enough professional hockey matches to earn a pension, he returned to the firefighting job that he had worked in British Columbia for the past 12 years and remained there until his retirement in 1992. He played several games with the Spokane Jets and the Western Hockey League’s Portland Buckaroos during the 1972-1973 season, but bowed out of the sport for good after that. He is a member of the British Columbia Sports, British Columbia Hockey, and International Ice Hockey Federation Halls of Fame and died in September 2014 following a heart attack brought on by struggle with cancer.