Last season, the NHL noticed the majority of players receiving penalties for using sticks that were too curved were Europeans.
And no wonder. They grew up playing under International Ice Hockey Federation guidelines for stick blades, which allowed a bend of up to 1.5 centimeters – about three-fifths of an inch.
So, the league, in one of its few rules changes for this season, is allowing players to increase the curve of their blades from the previous limit of one-half inch to three-quarters.
Milan Hejduk of the Avalanche couldn’t be happier. He is one of the few Avs players who will take advantage of the new rule.
“It’s better for shooting the puck,” Hejduk said. “Especially wrist shots. You get more of a whip to your shot, more speed.”
The downside to a curvier stick blade is that it’s harder to control the puck. It’s easier to fumble the puck away while stick-handling in traffic, which is why most Avs players say they won’t do anything to their sticks. That includes Joe Sakic, who has one of the best wrist shots in the league. Wouldn’t he want more of a whip to his shot?
“I just don’t want to have a harder time handling the puck,” Sakic said. “I have a hard enough time as it is. I’m comfortable with my blade as it is. I don’t think you’ll see too many guys increase (the curve). The trade-off for having a bit more speed on the shot is the harder time handling it.”
In the 1960s, Bobby Hull became the first NHL player to radically curve the blade of his stick. He reportedly reached speeds of 120 mph on his slap shot, which netted him plenty of goals and terrorized goalies.
Chicago Blackhawks teammate Stan Mikita followed Hull’s lead, and before long so did many other players around the league.
As the years passed, the NHL gradually reduced how much curve is allowed, mostly out of concern for safety. Eye injuries to players from heavily whipped slap and wrist shots increased, and goalies complained over the inherent disadvantages they faced.
But the NHL, in its attempts to increase scoring from the recent “Dead Puck Era,” relaxed the standards this summer, which should keep many of its most skilled players – and European imports – happy.
“I think it’s a dumb rule, why you can’t have a curve whatever you want,” Hejduk said. “If you have too big a curve, you can’t handle the puck, so it’s always going to be a big (risk) to do it. Some guys who have played their whole careers with pretty straight sticks, they aren’t going to change it now. I used to have a very wide curve back in the Czech. You could have any curve you wanted.”
NHL players often have cheated the curved-stick limits, using wider curves in the first two periods of a game before falling in line late in a game when a penalty might prove costly. One of the more famous illegal stick curve penalties occurred in Game 2 of the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals when Marty McSorley of Los Angeles was penalized two minutes after Montreal called for a measurement of his stick blade. Montreal scored on the power play to tie the game, won it in overtime and used it as a springboard to win the series.
There is concern among some that injuries could increase because of the relaxed stick rule, especially with visors not mandatory in the NHL. But, judging by the response of most players so far, not many plan to take advantage of the new rule.
“I don’t have any curve, and I won’t, even with the new rule,” Avs winger Ian Laperriere said. “Some guys like Milan, they can handle the puck still with that kind of stick. I can’t. So, I won’t.”
