Brian Elliott has embraced the nickname given to him regardless of the fact that it stems from a former children’s show. He’s even gone so far as to model his mask designs after the name. In this newest installment of Elliott’s masks, Jason Livery of HeadStrongGrafx has put together an incredibly detailed incarnation of a blue, white, and yellow moose. The moose is angry and it shows. Elliott is expected to have the starting job going into this season, but as we alluded to in our mask post for Jake Allen, he’ll have some heady company, so he’ll need to be sharp. We have no doubt he’ll be solid, and here at InGoal, we’re even more certain this new mask is going to look awesome in play.

While the nickname may be derived from a soft and cuddly character, the moose on Elliott’s latest ask is anything but warm and fuzzy. In a style similar to Ryan Miller’s old Buffalo masks, the moose head is superimposed upon the mask, with yellow eyes glaring and teeth bared. The detail from Livery is impressive, as he works in the classic blue and gold of the Blues with the shaggy, mean mug of a bull moose.

On the chin of this Vaughn mask (designed by Pro’s Choice), a small, faint Blues logo is visible in between the hairy features. The bared teeth of the moose stick out from either side of the cage and give the impression that the large mammal is getting ready to swallow pucks whole. While Elliott likely won’t want consistent shots to the face, rest assured he’ll be ready when he does take the intermittent puck to the melon. Livery mentioned that this was similar to the last mask he did for Elliott, “but we tweaked it a little”.

Elliott was a revelation several years ago, as he went 23-10-4 with 9 shutouts in 38 games. His .940 SV% and 1.56 GAA was tops amongst starters with more than 30 games, and combined with Jaroslav Halak, took home the William M. Jennings Trophy for lowest GA/G during the 82 game regular season. The Blues allowed a full .18 goals per game less than the runner-up Los Angeles Kings. While Elliott may have come back down to earth for the last couple seasons, he is still among the top tier goaltenders with regard to save percentage and goals against. In addition, since 2011, Elliott leads the league in “quality start percentage”.

Quality starts is a relatively new and less established way of evaluating goaltenders, but essentially denotes a quality start as a game where the goalie has a .917 SV% or better with 21+ shots, and maintaining a save percentage at least as good as the average AHL call-up (.885 SV%) in a game where he faces 20 shots or fewer. It’s an interesting way to look at goalies and their starts, and in Elliott’s case, it paints a pretty nice picture, like his mask!

Jason Livery has been pretty busy as of late, recently putting together masks for Elliott’s teammate, Jake Allen, Thomas McCollum (Detroit Red Wings), and Karri Ramo (Calgary Flames). Elliott and Livery have worked together on masks for quite some time, including this Casey Jones mask, the first Moose mask, and even this awesome “away game” mask. You can find more great masks from Livery on the HeadStrongGrafx website. You can also follow HeadStrongGrafx on Twitter and Facebook to see some great new designs and ideas. You can see a few more shots of Elliott’s moose mask below!