Photo: Richard Bachman's mask features Stephen King novel 'The Shining'

Dallas Stars goaltender Richard Bachman shares a name with author Stephen King's alias so the goalie's new mask pays homage to King and one of his greatest stories, 'The Shining.'

By Brian Stubits

Aug 19, 2012 at 6:30 pm ET • 1 min read

Bachman's mask for next season is a thriller. (DaveArt.com)

Dallas Stars goaltender Richard Bachman holds a rather dubious honor. He is only the world's second most-famous Richard Bachman, being beat out by a man who never actually existed.

More clearly, Richard Bachman was the pen name used by horror writer Stephen King to write some of his own works. Eventually the code was cracked and King's pseudonym was revealed as just that. As a result the Stars goalie has a link to Stephen King and he's going to use that next season.

Bachman's new mask was revealed by artist Dave Gunnarson on Sunday and it pays homage to one of King's greatest novels, The Shining. It was of course made even more popular by a 1980 movie starring Jack Nicholson. It's scary good, if I may say so, myself.

Here is some of Gunnarson's description from his website DaveArt.com.

To make it even more scary we decided to use only one color all over the mask, and it is all painted in a scary mix of calm paint and an uncomfortable feeling all over the mask. It is all created with old school airbrush paint mixed with oil paint tech.

The left side has just an evil sinister feeling, and if you look close into the star you find the same carpet as in the hotel! On the right side we present the rage.

The right side, as you can see above, stays in the same color motiffe -- which is very similar to the look the Stars are sporting these days -- and features different scenes and characters from the flim. The chin says "Bachs," a pretty clear reference.

It's awesome, no doubt about that. Maybe next year Bachman's mask can pay homage to a book that was actually credited to Bachman, like the Running Man. Might I suggest putting Sub-Zero on the mask? After all, he was a "goalie."

But back to The Shining. No post about that movie would be complete without a reference to its most famous scene.