Unmasked: Evolution of leg pads has increased performance

When Stuart Skinner walked out for the 2023 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic, the Edmonton Oilers goalie looked a lot like one of his more famous predecessors thanks to a custom set of CCM pads and gloves that looked like the gear the legendary Grant Fuhr once wore.

Skinner's classic appearance included leather straps running through the front of the leg pads and rounded sections running up and across the face. It was accomplished by a graphic designer and new UV printing process that allows CCM to apply a retro look to modern equipment.

Skinner should be grateful because goalie pads have come a long way since Fuhr's days.

"It's night and day," said Bill Ranford, who started his 15-season NHL career in 1985-86, four years after Fuhr and was his teammate for four seasons with the Oilers. "Equipment companies are evolving and coming up with some unbelievable changes from my time."

The biggest changes involve new materials since Ranford retired as a player in 2000. He is in his first season as the Los Angeles Kings director of goaltending after 17 as their goalie coach.

"I caught the tail end of the era where it was a mix of horsehair and foam (inside the pad)," he said. "The wear and tear on our bodies from the pads back in the day and how wet and heavy they'd get. You'd play back-to-back or three in five and the pads would not dry in between. The water just didn't leave the pad and you could feel it by the time you went out for warm-ups. People don't understand the physicality we dealt with. Now it's all high-density foams."

The foams inside modern pads have made a huge difference to both weight and performance, with some companies able to dial in rebounds to match individual preferences, whether it's for soft rebounds keeping the puck as close as possible or fast rebounds propelling it past sticks in tight and further away, buying a goalie time to move to the next position.

But the removal of those leather straps Skinner had added back by an artist also played a significant role.

Pads today can weigh in around -- and in some cases under -- five pounds each and a big part of that reduction from Ranford and Fuhr's days was getting rid of those leather straps that wrapped around the back of the pad and the heavy metal buckles that secured them. Goalies used to have four or five such straps and buckles, including one at the bottom of the pad called a boot strap that was designed to run under the skates. Eventually, Henrik Lundqvist added a loop atop the heel of his skates, to run back through what became called the "Lundqvist Loop".

Brian's Custom Sports was the first to build a pad with Velcro attachments and a combination of nylon and elastic straps instead of leather and metal buckles, debuting the appropriately named Sub-Zero pad with then-Winnipeg Jets goalie Chris Mason in 2012. Eleven years later, some NHL goalies still have the strap at the bottom, but few use leather anywhere else.

"It was great," Vancouver Canucks goalie Thatcher Demko said of the shift to Velcro. "It's just like anything else, sometimes when you look back, it seems ridiculous we used to do that."

Beyond cutting weight, the benefit most often cited by goalies is the ability to get their pads on and off a lot faster with the Velcro straps, but goalies have also gained an increased ability to dial in how the pad sits on and against their leg through a variety of new elastic-and-Velcro based strapping options around the calf in order to improve both feel and performance.

For example, CCM partnered with Ryan Frayne, a recreation league goalie with a biomechanics PhD, on a 2016 study that discovered that a pad strapped a little looser around the knee can actually get to the ice faster. That's because when a goalie initiates a downward drop into a butterfly, it can drive the knee area of the pad down with enough force that it separates from the goalie's knee, and the pad can actually get to the ice before the knee catches up.

Getting a pad down to the ice faster is something most goalies welcome, but how that pad fits and feels may be even more important. Some like it looser, allowing the pad to almost hang off and move around their leg. Others preferer a tighter fit like the pad is moving as an extension of their leg, even if it isn't on the ice as easy or as long. New strapping systems have made it easier for every goalie to find their balance between a pad that is loose enough to rotate, land flat and seal the ice when they drop, and one they still feel is connected to their leg.

"The inner-calf strap, to me, that was the most important feel of what was on my leg," said Canucks goalie Casey DeSmith, who wears a True pad with a two-strap Fast Rotation System that wraps his lower leg. "With the loose leather straps, it was just less consistent the way the pad sat on your leg and when the pad sits more consistently your movement is more consistent. I was thrilled when they got rid of the leather straps because they didn't do anything."

Some of the goalies who have been around a little longer might disagree.

Marc-Andre Fleury of the Minnesota Wild still has leather straps on his pads but wears them so loose they don't affect pad performance and has admitted it's just for old-school aesthetics.

For Jonathan Quick of the New York Rangers, however, the leather straps are a must. While most goalies leave straps loose around the leg, Quick cinches his up incredibly tight.

"It feels like it's like part of my leg as opposed to just this pad that's resting in front of it," Quick said of Vaughn pads he agreed are probably the softest, most flexible in the NHL today.

In terms of that flex profile, Quick's pads are also at least a little closer to the Fuhr and Ranford models of the past, so perhaps it's not a surprise he still likes to use leather straps.

"We've kind of messed around a little bit trying to make them a little bit lighter but with the Velcro I can never get them tight enough, so I stick with the leather," Quick said.

At this point, it makes Quick the last of his kind in the NHL.

"It's crazy to look at," DeSmith said. "Nobody does that."

Anymore.