Five, six, pick out sticks

Number of choices has grown, but a few players still prefer good ol' wood

By Rick Sadowski, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published March 25, 2008 at 9:20 p.m.

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Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Tales of the tape jobs. Joe Sakic's stick.

Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Tales of the tape jobs. Cody McLeod's stick.

Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Second-year Avalanche center Paul Stastny has the distinction of being the team's only player - and one of 13 in the league - to still use a wooden hockey stick. "Wood sticks have been there my whole life," Stastny said.

Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Tales of the tape jobs. Ryan Smyth's stick.

Photo by Associated Press

Ottawa's Jason Spezza, like Colorado's Paul Stastny, prefers wood.

Photo by Bruce Bennett / Getty Images

Sales of wood sticks are fading at Sherwood-Drolet in Quebec.

Photo by Barry Gutierrez / The Rocky

Tales of the tape jobs. Adam Foote's stick.

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The two most important pieces of hockey equipment, according to Milan Hejduk, are his skates and his sticks.

"Everything else is pretty much the same," the Avalanche right wing says. "These two are pretty personal. Everybody likes different things."

But even that is changing in what has become a high-tech world of hockey equipment. The wooden stick, once considered as essential as ice, has become rarer than a bench-clearing brawl.

Of the more than 700 players employed by the 30 NHL teams, it's believed only 13 still are using wooden sticks. The rest have switched to composite sticks made from a variety of synthetic materials such as graphite, fiberglass, carbon and titanium.

Composite sticks are lighter, can add greater velocity to a shot and, unlike wooden sticks, require little modification when they arrive from the factory.

Once a common sight, it's relatively unusual to see players sawing and sanding sticks or using miniature blowtorches to form curves by heating the blades.

"Somebody could step on your stick and break it, and all the work you did was for nothing," said Hejduk, who switched to composite sticks about five years ago.

Second-year center Paul Stastny still uses a wooden stick, making him the lone holdover on the Avalanche. One other teammate, left wing Ryan Smyth, continues to use a wooden blade.

"Even our goaltenders use composite sticks," said Avalanche equipment manager Mark Miller, who joined the staff in 1998. "My first year here, we still had a lot of guys using a lot of wood. Then it slowly started to change. You had the two pieces, composite shafts and composite blades, and then the full one-piece stick. It's just progressed from there."

Listen to Stastny and he'll tell you that progress in this case isn't necessarily better. What was good enough for his father, Hall of Famer Peter Stastny, is good enough for him.

"I grew up using the same one and it has a good feeling," said Stastny, whose Sherwood-Drolet stick is similar to the model his dad used to score 450 goals in 15 NHL seasons. "I'm comfortable with it. I'm sure I could get used to the (composite) sticks if I took the time to get adjusted to them. But the wood sticks have been there my whole life."

Hejduk became a convert to one-piece composite sticks after using wood blades for a while, so it was a gradual change.

"With the wood, it's probably the best feeling with the puck," he said. "But (his composite stick) lasts longer. I can play with one stick for a longer period of time - sometimes for six, seven, eight games. It's lighter, and I like that."

Sticks and stones

Some coaches and players contend that, because synthetic sticks are more flexible, they aren't as strong as when they were first introduced. During a game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Phoenix Coyotes, at least a dozen sticks broke.

"I don't know why we don't go back to wooden sticks," Coyotes coach Wayne Gretzky told The Arizona Republic. "I was teasing the guys on the bench - we have to go back to using wooden sticks. They said they don't make them anymore. That shows you how much I know."

Time to reorder

Paul Stastny said he uses about three wood sticks every two games, one for every two practices and about 100 during the course of a season.

"They don't break, but they get weaker," he said. "Once that happens, you have to switch sticks. If you're a centerman taking faceoffs, you can feel if it's getting a lot whippier. You want the most rigid one you can get."

Miller said the number of sticks each player uses in a season varies.

"Some guys will go through 140 sticks in a year and some will go through 40," he said. "(Joe) Sakic and (Milan) Hejduk go through very few and other guys go through a lot more. Part of it is the way they play. If they're battling in the corners or if you're a defenseman, slashing or getting slashed, they'll use more sticks."

Vanishing breed

The day may come when Stastny will have no choice but to start using composite sticks because the wood market is fading. Sherwood-Drolet, based in Sherbrooke, Quebec, plans to start outsourcing most of its wood sticks to Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

Denis Drolet, president and chief executive officer of the firm his father, Leopold, founded in 1949, told the Montreal Gazette the company would continue to produce made-to-order wood sticks at its Canadian plant for NHL clients who include Stastny, Montreal's Patrice Brisebois and Ottawa's Jason Spezza.

"Hopefully, they'll always be around," Stastny said.

Blade forerunner

The more pronounced the curve, the faster a puck can be propelled. But a bigger curve makes it more difficult to handle the puck and receive passes, especially when it is on a player's backhand side.

Stan Mikita, who played for the Chicago Blackhawks from 1958 to 1980, is believed to be the first player to use a curved blade. He scored 541 goals in his career and is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Keeping track

Sticks during a game are lined up in numerical order in a rack near the bench.

"Each player will have one or two, maybe even three, sticks," said Miller, the Avalanche equipment manager. "If a guy needs one, he can usually grab it."

The name and jersey number of players are on the sticks.

"But you also get to know which knob each player has, what they all look like," he said.

Black and white

Skaters wrap the knob of their sticks with adhesive tape for a better grip and the blade for better puck control. Any color tape is allowed.

Some players use black tape on the blade, thinking it makes it more difficult for goalies to follow the black puck, but Avalanche forward Milan Hejduk uses white.

"I've asked our goalies about it, if they can't see the puck on a guy's stick when he has black tape, and they say it's not true," he said.

Sticking point

The most memorable infraction involving an illegal stick took place during the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals between the Canadiens and Kings.

Trailing 1-0 in the series and 2-1 in the final minutes of the third period of Game 2 at the Montreal Forum, the Canadiens asked referee Kerry Fraser to measure the curve of the blade of Kings defenseman Marty McSorley's stick. The curve exceeded one-half of an inch, which was the rule at the time, calling for a minor penalty. The Canadiens would have been assessed a delay-of-game penalty if the stick had been legal.

After McSorley was sent to the penalty box, Canadiens coach Jacques Demers pulled goalie Patrick Roy for a six-on-four advantage. Eric Desjardins scored a power-play goal to tie the score and another in overtime. The Canadiens won the Cup in five games. Players have been allowed to curve their blades by as much as three- quarters of an inch since the 2005-06 season.

Numbers game

13 NHL players still use wooden sticks: Adrian Aucoin, Patrice Brisebois, Pavol Demitra, Joe DiPenta, Bobby Holik, Markus Naslund, Yanic Perreault, Martin Rucinsky, Jason Spezza, Stastny, Josef Vasicek, David Vyborny and Noah Welch.

He said it

"One of these times, I'm actually going to have to take a summer and put the wood away. Hopefully, it's not too soon."

Spezza, Ottawa Senators forward

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