Unmasked: Offseason allows goalies to experiment with equipment

When Dallas Stars goalie Jake Oettinger steered a couple high shots off his blocker over the glass and deep into the crowd during a game against the Seattle Kraken last season, his counterpart in the other crease took notice.

Joey Daccord was amazed at how hard the puck jumped off Oettinger's Bauer blocker, so he made a point of trying one during the offseason and decided to switch to one despite wearing pads and a glove made by True.

"It's just the pure pop," Daccord said of the blocker, which like their pads, features a different surface material designed to create longer, faster rebounds. "It's nuts. Honestly, the reason I asked to try one was because Oettinger had like three or four blocker saves that went out of the rink by like 20 feet over the glass, and I was like, 'That's sick,' so I tried it, and I liked it."

When it comes to choosing equipment for the upcoming season, the summer is often a time of experimenting for NHL goalies, who must weigh the benefits of matching gear -- both aesthetically and in terms of the sponsorship money that can come with wearing one brand -- against evolving performance benefits.

It's a decision often influenced by familiarity and feel, but with companies adding new materials designed to change how much the equipment weighs, how fast pads slide and how hot the rebounds come off it, that's not always the priority anymore.

"At the highest level, you get access to pretty much whatever you want, which is a blessing and a curse because I'm sitting here thinking, 'Okay, what I wear has worked for a long time," Daccord said. "But you're also doing yourself a disservice if you don't see if there's something that can make you 1 percent better."

Jake Allen went through a similar process with his equipment this summer.

The New Jersey Devils goalie started his 13-season NHL career wearing Vaughn pads and gloves, switched to CCM and then to True pads and blocker with a glove from Brian's during his four years with the Montreal Canadiens. It was a combination he wore last season, when he was traded to New Jersey, but this summer, he tried Bauer equipment before ending up wearing all Brian's.

"I was in Bauer for most of the summer, trying to almost keep up with the times a little bit," Allen said. "I needed something a little bit lighter, a little bit faster and I just realized that if I'm not trying every resource I can to get myself to that next level, then what am I doing here? I have this opportunity and we're very fortunate some of these companies bend over backwards to help us out and Bauer really did that for me and Brian's obviously, with the trapper I was using, reached out and asked if I wanted to sample pads too. I was like 'What do I have to lose?' As soon as I put them on, I fell in love with them."

For Allen, whose True pads were actually based off an earlier CCM model produced in the same factory in Montreal, it was a matter of familiarity.

"It was more of your standardized goalie pad, thicker at the bottom, and I wore it fairly tight," Allen said. "That's just the way I see a goalie pad. It's got a bit of girth. I want some technology, but at the same time, I still want it to feel and look like a goalie pad."

Sometimes goalies face choices between feel and technology within the same brand.

Stuart Skinner switched from a CCM E-Flex pad to an AXIS XF model last season, but when things started slowly for him and the Edmonton Oilers he went back to the older, softer pad for a couple practices. Ultimately, he stuck with the AXIS because it had new foams designed to produce rebounds that came off the face faster and travelled further, making it harder for shooters in tight to get a stick on the puck and buying Skinner time to recover.

"I noticed right away rebounds come off a lot hotter in AXIS," Skinner said. "For the pads and even the AXIS blocker, just getting rebounds the heck out of there gives you a little bit more time, and it gives the team even some more time, instead of scrambling in front of the net on shorter rebounds."

As Allen noted, he prefers to wear his pads tight, and that can be tougher with some of the thinner, stiffer new models. It's part of what led him to an all Brian's set up this season, but his love for their glove means he probably would have worn mismatched equipment again even if he stayed in Bauer pads.

Not everyone is as willing to mix-and-match like that.

"One thing that was preached early in my career is just because you want to look good in one brand or someone is offering money, if you don't feel comfortable, don't do it," Allen said. "Nowadays, I don't know if that's always the case."

There are only a handful of goalies around the NHL with mismatched sets.

Filip Gustavsson of the Minnesota Wild wears Bauer pads and a Bauer blocker, but a True glove, even though the colors don't always match perfectly. For him, it's all about the feel of his Bauer glove changing years ago, and he has since also tried CCM and Vaughn before settling on his current True model.

"It's not about the branding or anything, just it doesn't feel the same," Gustavsson said. "Bauer made a great one last summer and I started the first 5-10 games last year with the Bauer glove, and just the team and I didn't play as good, so I went back to what worked the year before and stuck with it."

Jonas Johansson of the Tampa Bay Lightning went the other way this season, switching to a Bauer glove despite sticking with True pads and blocker after trying a sample that the company rep brought for Andrei Vasilevskiy.

"I just tried one on and really liked it," Johansson said. "The pocket is big in it, so it's easier to catch the puck and it just feels good."

Johansson wasn't worried about having a different look, even though Bauer can digitally print graphics on its equipment. Daccord had them print a pattern that matches the rest of his True gear on his new Bauer blocker, making it that much harder to tell from a distance that he's wearing different brands.

Allen doesn't mind having a different look, so long as he gets to keep wearing his Brian's glove.

"I'm very biased but I think it's the best glove in the world," Allen said. "It reminds me of when I was starting to be a goalie back in 1995, the first glove I ever had was a Brian's Doctor Hook mitt. Hopefully I'll finish my career with it too."