Unmasked: Goalies putting personal touch on sticks to improve game

NHL goalies like to make their equipment their own, whether through custom-painted masks or individualized graphics on their pads and gloves.

Now, the palette is expanding to customizable and personalized sticks. From tape jobs to custom grips, flex and feel, a lot of NHL goalies choose options unique to them, just as forwards and defensemen have for years.

In fact, NHL goalie sticks may be like snowflakes: no two are the same.

For some goalies, individual stick specs are about improved passing. For others, a customized grip can impact in a positive manner with how the blocker interacts with the stick squaring up on a shooter, how well it fits against the pants in a butterfly, or how well the stick seals the ice in paddle-down position.

For some, the desire to add a custom look inadvertently led to performance benefits.

That’s how Carter Hart of the Philadelphia Flyers discovered the benefits of rubbing a unique black pattern with a puck onto the white tape on his stick blade.

“I randomly started doing it like this at the beginning of this year,” Hart said of the black marks around the perimeter of the blade. “Originally, I would just do the bottom and now I do the whole thing. At first, I thought it just kind of looks cool to leave a little rectangle in the middle, but I feel better handling the puck too.”

Hart isn’t sure why that is, conceding it may be a mental thing, but feels it adds grip when the puck contacts the blade of his stick, while adding the ice doesn’t stick to the blade as much.

He’s not the first to believe the black marks help puck handling.

“When I go out to play the puck, I can see my blade at all times,” said Boston Bruins goalie Linus Ullmark, who places black marks on the top, bottom and corner of his blade. “When you’re out in the white ice, a white blade can be hard to see, but this is easy.”

Ullmark also has a custom blade, curve, shaft and lie on the Bauer stick he uses. It was employed to launch a puck over everyone, land it near the far hash marks and become the 13th goalie to score a goal -- just the eighth by shooting it into the net -- in a 3-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks on Feb. 25.

Those types of customizations are increasing as puck-handling becomes a more important part of the position, but personal preferences can be as unique as a goalie’s style of play. Some want more flex and varying kick points to improve passing and shooting, while others prefer a stiffer profile for passing and to stop hard rims placed behind the net by the opposition looking to establishing a forecheck.

Alex Nedeljkovic of the Pittsburgh Penguins is as adept handling and shooting the puck as any goalie and has scored two empty-net goals in the American Hockey League, including Nov. 17 of this season, and one in the ECHL.

But he prefers a notably stiffer Warrior stick than Tristan Jarry, his playing partner with the Penguins. Jarry has more flex in the model he used to become the 14th goalie to score a goal -- and ninth to shoot it in -- on Nov. 30 against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Those preferences can include how often each goalie replaces his stick because even composite sticks soften across time.

“I use a pretty stiff stick. I find I can get more behind a clearing attempt that way,” Nedeljkovic said. “[Jarry] definitely likes his a little flexier, so he’ll use an older stick for games because of the softness. But I prefer a fresh one.

"It’s similar to a player stick: the more you use it, the more it softens. Obviously, we can get by longer than a player but for some of us it makes a little difference.”

The flex of a goalie stick also can be affected by the length of the shaft, and shorter shafts were popularized by Carey Price with the Montreal Canadiens around 2017 to the point several brands now offer stock models with a similarly short shaft.

Another common customization involves the grip area, or shoulder, where the paddle narrows to merge with the shaft. Variations range from a handful of stock options with varying degrees of slope, to more extreme customizations like the squared off top edge used by Henrik Lundqvist with the New York Rangers because it let him to keep his blocker hand relaxed.

Sergei Bobrovsky of the Florida Panthers uses a different shape to achieve his preferred blocker angle, a “steep” shoulder with a gradual narrowing that starts further down his CCM stick, improving balance and letting him grip down on the paddle.

Chris Driedger of the Seattle Kraken stole Bobrovsky’s steep shoulder, an increasingly popular NHL choice, but added his own twist with a notch on the bottom edge, first cutting it himself before Warrior made it part of his pattern.

That small cutout allows Driedger to wrap a finger around the stick without worrying about hurting his finger -- or losing the seal with his stick -- when he lays it along the ice in a paddle-down situation.

“It feels more like it's an extension of my arm, whereas before it felt flimsy,” Driedger said. “I can really grip the stick.”

Marc-Andre Fleury of the Minnesota Wild recently changed his shoulder shape, adding a rare custom “convex” slope on the top side of his grip after noticing a stick that Price gave him was shaved down on that side.

“I always felt a little stuck with my thumb and then I felt like my stick was farther from my butterfly,” Fleury said. “[Now] it’s closer to the pad.”

Then there are the unique tape jobs above the paddle.

Toronto Maple Leafs goalie Martin Jones, like Price used to, adds layers of stick and grip tape to fatten up the handle for his bigger hands. Others employ different tape jobs at the end of the shaft for either fashion and function. Other goalies use older stick models hidden under new graphics.

With imagination and the NHL rule book as the only governors on creativity, it is not a stretch to say that each goalie stick in the NHL is unique.