The Complete Handbook of Hockey Sticks

Chapter 1: Understanding Hockey Sticks

1. Understanding Hockey Sticks

A hockey stick is not a simple lever. It is a controlled-flex energy spring, a tuned piece of composite or wood that stores kinetic energy during the wind-up of a shot and releases it into the puck at the point of contact. To understand how a stick works, you have to stop thinking of it as a solid rod and start thinking of it as a coiled spring that happens to have a flat blade on the end. Every element of the stick's design—its length, its flex rating, its taper, its blade construction—exists to manage the transfer of energy from your muscles into the puck, and to do so consistently at high speed.

Consider the physics of a wrist shot. When you pull the puck toward you and then push forward, you are not just slapping the puck with a flat surface. You are first loading the stick by pushing down into the ice with your bottom hand. This loading action bends the shaft. The amount of bend is controlled by the stick's flex rating, usually measured in pounds of force required to deflect the shaft by one inch. A typical intermediate player uses a 70 to 85 flex; a strong professional might use a 100 to 110 flex. When you load a 85-flex stick, you are effectively pushing against a spring that requires 85 pounds of force to bend it one inch. The energy you put into that bend is