CANADIENS PAY BIG STICK BILLS TO INDULGE PLAYERS’ PREFERENCES
Brendan Gallagher uses a new stick every game, meaning it costs the Canadiens well over $16,000 a year to buy sticks for him.
It’s not uncommon for NHL players to use a new stick every game and their teams pay for them — an average of about $200 per stick, which is about $100 less than they cost in a sports store. The regular season is 82 games, not including practices, so the stick bill for NHL teams can get very expensive. Even if a player has a sponsorship deal to use a certain brand of stick, the team still has to purchase them.
Gallagher, who led the Canadiens with 31 goals heading into Thursday night’s game against the New York Islanders at the Bell Centre, uses a Warrior stick.
“They came after me,” said Gallagher, who started his NHL career using a Bauer stick. “The one thing I like about it is the Warrior factory is in North America, it’s in Mexico. So I just found the consistency of how they made the sticks was better. I like to use a new stick every game because I use a 70-flex stick, so they get pretty worn out, and you don’t want them breaking. So I grab a new one every game.”
Most NHL players use a stick with a flex between 85 and 95, but Gallagher — who is five-footnine and 184 pounds — likes a more whippy stick, and uses a toe curve to help him get the puck up high from tight spaces in front of the net. Canadiens captain Shea Weber uses a 122 flex on his Bauer stick.
“I’ve always done the same thing with my stick,” Gallagher said. “Black tape and then I wax it. I don’t re-tape my stick between periods ... it drives guys nuts. I like to joke around that the worse the tape is, the harder it is for the goalie to figure out where the puck’s going because I don’t know either. The tape will be all messed up throughout the game, and guys that play with me always tell me to change the tape. I say no. But I put quite a bit of wax on it before the game so it sticks.”
Defenceman Jeff Petry uses white tape on his CCM stick, which has a 105 flex, and re-tapes it between periods. He started using a CCM stick in the AHL, where it’s mandatory because of a sponsorship deal that makes CCM the exclusive supplier of sticks, helmets, gloves, pants and jerseys.
“I just always used white tape ... I don’t know why,” said the sixfoot-three, 197-pound Petry.
Asked how many sticks he goes through in a season, Petry said: “A lot. One a game, at least.”
Andrew Shaw is five-foot-11 and 182 pounds but uses a stiff 100 flex on his CCM stick. “Big arms,” he said with a grin. In fact, Shaw likes a stiffer stick because he said it helps him on faceoffs.
“When you have a flimsy stick, if you go against someone who has a strong stick, it can bend the blade out, it can bend the shaft,” he explained. “I like it for puck battles, handling pucks, faceoffs. I mean, I’m not really a heavy shooter.”
Shaw doesn’t use a new stick every game.
“I hate cutting sticks and taping them,” he said. “So I use them as long as they last, until they break. Guys like to give sticks away to kids or charity, and they always find it hard to find sticks of mine because I use them until they break.”
An older generation of hockey players will have fond memories of the Sher-Wood PMP 5030 stick that many NHLers used in the 1970s, or maybe the whiteand-red Titan stick that Wayne Gretzky later made popular. Today’s NHLers grew up mostly using one-piece composite sticks, starting with the first Easton Synergy models that came out around 2000. Shaw still uses the Joe Sakic curve from those Easton sticks, and Petry still uses the Mike Modano Synergy curve.
Shaw remembers as a kid getting Easton’s first version of the gold aluminum shaft stick with a replaceable wooden blade inserted into it.
“I used that for a little while just because my dad was sick of buying sticks,” Shaw recalled. “I think I used it for maybe three years, and by the end of the third year, it was warped one way. So my dad just gave it to my brother, who was a lefty, and he warped it back the other way.”
Gallagher remembers both he and his brother got Nike Apollo sticks for Christmas one year.
“I broke mine right away and I was going to a tournament, so my dad took my brother’s Christmas gift and gave it to me,” Gallagher recalled. “So I ended up stealing that. They ended up getting him another one, but I basically got both our Christmas presents, and he was pretty bitter about that.
“It was a good Christmas gift,” Gallagher added with a smile.
Gallagher doesn’t have to wait for Christmas anymore to get a new stick. scowan@postmedia.com twitter.com/ StuCowan1