Hockey is full of biases based on weird reasons. Heck, Kevin Lowe once defended the horrendous play of the Edmonton Oilers by proclaiming them to be “visually better.” Here at FlamesNation we’re fine with owning our biases, so we’ll just lay this out: we love awesome goalie gear combinations.

We were filled with abject sorrow when Jonas Hiller and his awesomely colourful Kohos left town over the summer. We’re still a bit sad that there are no Finns in town with cool, skull-emblazoned masks. But now that the season has commenced, we’ve grown to love the gear of the team’s two new goaltenders.

Where to begin? Elliott’s gear is delightfully new-school. A noted fan of colourful pads, he’s gone the extra mile with his new gear. He’s made the change from wearing Bauers to CCMs, but he’s got a tremendously great pad setup. His mask accentuates it nicely, too, being both bright and colourful yet kinda scary. I can imagine this setup looks terrifying to shooters, especially at home with the extra bit of red.

While Elliott went new school with his setup, Johnson mostly went old school. His Vaughn setup features the primary Flames colours but otherwise are white-based. The thing that makes him great, though, is the fact that he has different masks for home and away games. They both have a similar Flaming C motif, also old school, but are customized to work with the aesthetic of each particular uniform.