Our friend Kyle from the Illegal Curve has an excellent article on the wood versus composite stick. I have to say that I agree with what he has to say.
It is a good subject and we have talked about it from time to time with my buddies that I watch the college games with. I was over at Scheels in Grand Forks, ND a few days back and was looking for a hat in the hockey department when picked one of these composite sticks. Yuck! They don’t even feel like the hockey sticks of old. It is a piece of carbon fiber and it feels like some thing that should be on the space shuttles and not in the hands of a hockey player.
I will say that I that miss the aluminum and woods sticks. Not that I am nostalgic or old school because I like trendy things and I am tired of watching all of these composite sticks break all of the time. They are expensive and not cost effective. How many times have you seen your favorite team on the power play and the defenseman takes a shot from the point and his stick explodes causing an odd numbered rush up ice the other way? I have seen it happen a few times during the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring. I also hate sound of the slaps shots from one of these sticks. Heck just think off all the all-pros that used woods sticks; Bourque, Neely, Coffey, Kurri etc. Like Kyle mentions in the comments Bobby Hull was able to play and score goals without one of these things. Can you imagine a Bobby Orr a Bobby Hull slap shot with a Carbon Fiber stick?
If I was a hockey player I wouldn’t be helped by wood composite or Alum because I would be a non-skilled energy player, prone to taking a untimely penalty. I think composite today’s sticks could also be compared to the big headed golf drivers of today; think what Jack or Arnie Palmer could have done with a big headed graphite shaft driver with a nice Kevlar composite driver head. The sweet spot is huge with these things and you can really tee it up same with the composite stick. I think they make mediocre players better as well. I also miss the days of the old Christian Brothers or Easton aluminum hockey sticks where you could just replace the blade when it broke.
That's a very good post there Goon. I too am a fan of the older wood and aluminum sticks. In fact the only stick I buy these days is the Sher-Wood 9950. It's a wood stick with kevlar reinforcing lining both sides of the shaft. I take such a hard slap shot that it's the only one that actually can last me all winter. Anything else feels like a toothpick and breaks correspondingly. However, I have also used these composite one-pieces and the difference is in the weight of the stick. Some of them are half the weight, and a lighter stick means a faster player. What it really comes down to is personal preference. It is astonishing how often they break though and it an extremely big waste of money and resources as well.
ReplyDeleteIt is fun watching high school hockey and seeing these kids partents facial expression when their kid breaks another stick. Opps there goes another 200-300 dollars. :) Sucks to be them.
ReplyDeleteWell actually a lot of high school kids don't pay for their sticks anymore - at least in the Minnesota Twin Cities area they don't. I have cousins that have played the past few seasons for Class AA schools and they get composites from school sponsors.
ReplyDeleteTwo-piece stick. They may not be as 'balanced' as a true, one piece, one mold composite, but with a wood blade you get much better feeling and only have to replace a $20 blade when you break it, since the majority of failures occur at the shaft-blade interface. Yes, sometimes the shaft will break, but far less than the blade. Interesting note, for pretty much the entire existence of 'one-piece' sticks, almost all but the very most expensive sticks have actually been a composite shaft and a composite blade fused together permanently. There are a few models out there that are true one-piece sticks, but most are actually two pieces
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