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ST. LOUIS - If you had good seats to one of the Blues' preseason games this year, you might have noticed something strange about goalie Carter Hutton's mask.
At first glance, perhaps you saw a mostly-white design with a hand-painted Blue Note on top and a teardrop on the left cheek. But when you looked again, you saw a ferocious-looking skull with big, gnarly teeth.
Your mind isn't playing tricks on you - Hutton simply turned his head.

Hutton's mask designer - Jesse Acciacaa of Jesse's Custom Design Airbrush Studio - created a two-sided design for the new Blues goaltender this year.
"He likes to do half-and-half, and I let him run with it," Hutton said recently. "I'm not very creative when it comes to that kind of stuff, but he is."

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The vicious skull side is just creativity at it's finest - not much story to it other than it looks awesome. But the white hand-painted-Blue-Note-and-tear-drop side is a tribute to former Blues goalie Ed Staniowski, who first suited up for the club in 1975. Staniowski's mask was also the basis for a mask for former Blues goalie Hannu Toivonen, who played 23 games with the Blues during the 2007-08 season.
"It's very unique," Hutton said of this year's design.
But what about the back plate?
"There's a fish, because every summer, I have a fish derby back home with some friends and that fish is on the T-shirts we made," Hutton said. "That's a tribute to my friends and family back home, something to remind me of where I came from."

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