The times are changing in hockey, and as we’ve noted previously so are the materials used in making sticks. This week TheStar.com noted that even peewee players are taking to the ice with high-tech hockey sticks:
A generation ago… an elite team of 12-year-olds might have been lucky to have two players who could give a goalie pause when they pulled the trigger… Those days, when players carried sticks hewn largely from the forests of Ontario and Quebec, are gone. Today, sticks are made in factories from Mexico to China to Vietnam. Constructed of high-tech composite materials and bearing price tags that can reach $300, the sticks can now put dents in both goalie masks and in wallets.
But it does give players an advantage:
The change to the composite stick has been entirely driven by the urge to create a hard shot, and an easier one.
So does this mean the end of the wooden hockey stick? Perhaps.
[Via TheStar.com: Stick shift: hockey stick technology is ‘great equalizer’]