If you ever played floor hockey in school you probably used a cheap plastic stick. But the wooden sticks aren’t just missing in gym class; they’re pretty much gone from the big leagues too. According to a story from The Montreal Gazette last month the last of the holdouts of wooden sticks has switched to the composite variety last season.
This is an interesting turn of events, as just 20 years ago wood was all the rage and hardly anyone used composite materials. But as leather skates gave way to other materials, so wood has left the ice. This isn’t the only example where composite, or other so-called “space age” materials have replaced the tradition. Just 20 years ago steel was still widely used in high-end road bikes and now virtually every pro rides on carbon fiber, while golf clubs have gone from steel to titanium and other materials.
Hockey sticks have made a similar evolution, with wood being replaced by Kevlar, carbon fiber, titanium, graphite and even fiberglass – sorry, plastic is still for the pee wee players in the gym. The advantage of the new technologies is less weight. But additionally these molded materials can allow for different types of flex and kick points to maximize a player’s unique style on the ice.
Even Phoenix Coyotes’ defenseman Adrian Aucoin, who won a hardest shot competition in 2004 with a wood stick and reportedly reached a speed of 102.3 miles per hour, couldn’t hold on to the tradition wood. He made the switch last year.
Finally, we have to wonder what else these sticks might mean for the game? Last April, we noted that there was a question about the safety of the non-wood bats in baseball. While aluminum bats were first introduced in baseball as a cheap alternative to wood, only wood is used by the Majors. Today the pros in baseball, unlike their hockey counterparts, still cling to their wooden bats.
As aluminum has been popular with high school and college, there have been concerns about the safety. We’ll be watching to see if any similar safety claims are made about the non-wooden sticks on the ice.
[Via The Montreal Gazette: Wood sticks have gone extinct in the NHL]
[Via Business Insider Sports Page: The Wooden Hockey Stick Is Dead]