Mostly what I remember about all the sticks and guys using them that I've played with since I was 6 is about tape. I don't know if the tape that goes onto the stick counts in your history, but that's mainly what I remember. There's stuff in my head about guys who had the first really curved sticks (I'm 44 - I think the first really big wows were Hespelers) and how scary it was the way they could make the puck rise past head height at lethal speed... and how little the players could control that rise (going down for the shot-block became a win-win maneuver - your coach still applauded your hustle and take-one-for-the-team attitude, and yet getting down onto the ice lying sideways was almost the surest way to avoid actually getting hit with the thing. Blocking a shot standing up, though, from a distance of any more than about 6 feet, took real nerve).

But tape was really where it was at. Parents and, later on, junior teams would never dispute with anyone that a player needed a stick in order to play, but there was a lot of room to economize when it came to how much tape a stick's blade needed, and even more on how big the knob needed to be. I remember those plastic knobs flying off in mid-shot after someone was too stingy taping it on... probably because they didn't like it anyway. I played with a guy who believed he'd had a breakthrough discovery in tape technique that enabled him to shoot the "slurve", in which the puck tumbled sharply and curved erratically in flight after a slapshot with the specially-taped stick. The key was in putting a string of lengthwise-rolled tape (like you use to make the knob) wrapped every couple of inches all the way down the shaft of the stick and out onto the end of the blade. The blade was then taped normally, leaving a bunch of bumps on it. The shaft wrapping changed the grip, and the blade wrap changed the flight of the puck. I don't think it worked, but I think the tape job was so idiotic looking that it mesmerized opposing defencemen into looking at the stick, not at the letters on the player's chest. The only thing I ever saw the slurve actually do was tumble and bounce in practice, and I could do that without any special wrapping.

Coloured tape, white tape vs. black tape, what kind of stuff to put on black tape so the puck and water don't stick to it, electrician's tape, duct tape... all pressed into service for different specialities, all debated for many more man-hours than any 10 issues Parliament ever raised.

As for sticks, the only other thing that sticks out for me was watering sticks down when they were new, so that they wouldn't break so easily. It didn't matter that they instantly were no longer "Feather-Lite", or that they got really rubbery a lot sooner. What mattered was that they weighed a ton, and were thus much more effective chopping tools, and that they'd last longer.

That was about it,

Pat Lilburn
formerly of Rossland, B.C. now in Abbotsford B.C.

PS can't wait to read the book.