A printhead maintenance station for maintaining a printhead in an operable condition. The maintenance station has an elastically deformable pad coextensive with the printhead. The pad is a one-piece elastomer pad having a uniform contact surface configured for sealing contact with all nozzles in an ink ejection face of the printhead. A mechanism is configured for reciprocally moving the pad between a first position in which the contact surface is sealingly contacted with all nozzles in the ink ejection face, and a second position in which the contact surface is disengaged from the face. The pad and the mechanism cooperate such that the contact surface is progressively contacted with the face during sealing engagement and peeled away from the face during peeling disengagement.