10 ms·

Evgeny Kuznetsov practices with Bauer stick that has hole in the blade

86 points by pencerw 6y ago

pencerw 6y ago
>If you’ve been paying (extremely close) attention to the NHL playoffs, you may have noticed a weird-looking stick with a hole in the blade. The hole apparently allows for two different properties: stiffness above it and flexibility below. According to Bauer, this produces a slingshot effect -- almost like a smaller version of the stick’s shaft (which, as explained in this video, bends almost unbelievably to whip the puck forward). These days, ‘twigs’ are made of carbon fiber, though as the hockey lingo suggests, wood used to be the material of choice. The evolution of the hockey stick from wood to carbon fiber gives us insight into a material property called resilience. >Resilience is basically the opposite of damping. High resilience materials bounce back with most of the energy that you put into them. As Stevel Vogel illustrates in Cats’ Paws and Catapults, spider silk is a great example of low resilience material. “A web of high resilience would, like a trampoline, tend to fling the prey back out.” Vogel goes on to note that “resilience management highlights the dichotomy between nature and human technologies.” Natural materials, like wood, tend to have lower resilience whereas man-made materials, like carbon fiber, tend to have higher resilience. >You can see why carbon fiber, with its higher resilience, has overtaken wood as material du jour; more of the energy you put into the stick comes out on the puck for a faster shot. But a stick can be too resilient/springy -- when receiving a pass, you don’t want the puck to bounce off the stick away from you. Players call it “feel”. Some damping is beneficial, as shown in this slo-mo video of a stick that combats springiness with a urethane insert. These hole-y sticks try to solve the problem a different way, adding a softer spring into the mix with the aim of providing “feel” without taking away energy from the shot. So, is it worth buying the latest in hockey tech - a stick with a hole in it for $450? If you’re a beer leaguer like me, clapping your usual head-hunting bombs twenty feet wide of the net, probably not.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
evo_9 6y ago
It's been crazy watching the evolution of hockey sticks from wood to aluminum shafts, then to carbon-fiber. The prices have steadily skyrocketed, but it's hard to deny the incredible effects of just these material design changes. There are of course trade-offs, most notable being the tendency of these new carbon fiber sticks breaking without much warning, or apparent wear. The speed at which the shot comes off the stick now is pretty mind-boggling, too, which makes it easy for me to justify 300+ for a stick. They tend to either break soon, or last a lot longer than old style wood sticks, or aluminum + wood blades, etc. I'm eager to try out one of these new designs myself but the pricing is just absurd for a beer league even if I'm playing in the top non-pro league in Colorado, and one of the teams I play against is all retired well known pros. Like anything it'll come down as the process is refined and likely this approach is adopted from top-to-bottom. Excited to try one out for sure!
- cuddlybacon 6y ago
  I was in youth league hockey as carbon fiber sticks went from unheard of to ubiquitous. Carbon sticks failed in a spectacular way, but wood stills would also fail. They wouldn't break in two during a slapshot, but they would generally split along the bottom of the blade. If refs noticed it, you could get a penalty. By the time my parents caved in and bought a wood stick, I was at the point of consuming one new stick nearly every time I was on the ice. At that point, the higher upfront cost ended up being worth it.
  - cperciva 6y ago
    If refs noticed it, you could get a penalty. I'm curious, what penalty gets called here? I wasn't aware there was a "your equipment fell apart" penalty.
    - cuddlybacon 6y ago
      I think the penalty was something to do with equipment safety. I played in Canada, but this ruling seems quite similar to what was in effect for us: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084649-rule-605-broken-stick https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084649-rule-605... I think the worry is a broken stick has a chance of producing something sharp that can injure others. I think it is more of a worry when the break is along the shaft of a wooden stick (as you could stab someone, you're basically wielding a spear) but even a split along the bottom of a wooden stick's blade has the potential to lose splinters.
geogra4 6y ago
Wonder if hockey will either go the way of Tennis (where technology has rapidly changed how the game has been played) or baseballe - where the bats are always wood.
- docbrown 6y ago
  I don’t think they should or ever will step away from wood bats. It’s one of the few things that levels the playing field for all batters; instead letting brute force be the power behind the contact. Aluminum and corked bats would ultimately give an unfair advantage to the user as compared to a wood slugger. It’s fine in minor league and collegiate sports as they do not follow the MLB’s stricter regulations but if they plan to aim for the major leagues, they should start training with wood. — On second thought, I think the only time there would be a change is if there were a noticeable impact on the environment and the amount of word being cut to produce bats. But since America’s trademark sport is baseball, I do not see this happening any time soon.
  - prh8 6y ago
    Aluminum and corked bats also become a player safety issue in the majors. It's already a problem at all levels honestly, but the balance would be far more dangerous increasing already high major league exit velocities.
    - icelancer 6y ago
      BBCOR has solved this problem with metal bats; their COR is identical to wood bats (and likely worse in the aggregate).
  - aaronblohowiak 6y ago
    Wood products harvested sustainably protect forest lands by increasing their economic viability. If forests lose economic value from timber, they are more likely to be clearcut for agriculture. Edit: maple is also one of the most prevalent commercial timbers in USA, is native in most parts of the country and bat usage is so small a percent of maple consumption as to be effectively 0.
rsync 6y ago
What am I looking at here ? Is there, in fact, a web-based reference copy of a mailchimp brokered mailing list ? Do all mailchimp campaigns auto-generate these pages ? I have never seen this before. I've never considered a mailing list, or mailchimp campaign, for rsync.net but for some reason those same things with a bloggy web page backing store behind it weirdly appeals to me ...
- zrail 6y ago
  Most marketing email service providers provide something like this. If you've seen a link at the top of an email that says "view this in your web browser" you're probably looking at a link to a page hosted and generated by the ESP.
- zerocrates 6y ago
  "View this in your browser" or "click here if you're having trouble viewing this message" type links seem to be very common on this mailing list type stuff, so I think it's a fairly standard feature.
- pencerw 6y ago
  You're looking at The Prepared (theprepared.org/newsletter), a weekly newsletter about manufacturing and other stuff! It's sent via Mailchimp, which automatically creates an archive URL for every email campaign you send.
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    I've set up MailChimp campaigns several times - traditional sales lists, transactional stuff, software update notifications - and never thought of using it as a hosted/linkable newsletter. The "view this in your browser" link was always personalized for tracking, not semantic, IIRC. It did include the actual content of "Hello, {first name} {last name}!" tags, which obviously wouldn't work here for every unique reader. How long does this stick around? As long as you have a MailChimp account? I guess I assumed that the URL was unique per-user and would be deleted after 30 days, because the primary use case of Mailchimp seems to be not-quite-spam "We're having a sale!" bulk campaigns.
rdiddly 6y ago
Got distracted by the new post already added above this one, about the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In particular, other than its being a rare example of a spectacular bridge collapse that was more-or-less caught on film, I'm not sure it's a great example for an engineering ethics class. Because the most likely cause of its failure wasn't any particular ethical consideration, but the interaction of phenomema (wind vortex shedding and structural resonance) about which nobody had a lot of experience or knowledge at the time. Time goes by and we learn from the successes and the failures. Almost every major earthquake ends up pushing a few changes to the building codes. We now return you to your regularly scheduled hockey-related program.
- nl 6y ago
  (For people wondering what this comment is about, apparently the URL of the story got changed, and the previous version had something about Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the same page)
pugworthy 6y ago
I got a strong "Nimbus 5000" vibe reading this. It's pretty easy to read this and replace "stick" with "broom", "ice" with "arena", "quaffle" with "puck", and "hockey" with "quidditch" - and have it all sort of sound right.
- scott31 6y ago
  That is because hockey is nonsense, just like quidditch
  - pugworthy 6y ago
    Kind of like how a totally OT comment about the Tacoma Narrows bridge doesn't get down voted...
    - pencerw 6y ago
      it wasn't OT before the mods changed the URL that i originally posted: https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-prepared-4ydgzm58vl https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-prepared-4ydgzm58vl
      - pugworthy 6y ago
        Ah thanks for the clarification. It didn't per se make sense, but was related based on the final bit.
tyingq 6y ago
There's a pretty strong tradition of wrapping tape around the blade that I imagine is hard to break. I wonder how much that hurts the supposed benefits.
- takk309 6y ago
  The taping method is very player specific. For example, I like to tape from about an inch from the toe all the way back to the heel. Others, like just a few wraps near the toe. For me, a hole in the blade would have no aero benefits but for others, it could matter. The other benefits of the hole as they pertain to the blade flex would still be noticed regardless of taping style.
avonmach 6y ago
This reminds me slightly of RBK's O-Stick.
CoolGuySteve 6y ago
Puck bounce is already a weird randomization. It seems like have a hole in your blade that might hook the edge of the puck would only increase that randomness.
- takk309 6y ago
  That is an interesting thought. Settling a puck is a skill that all players have to develop at some point. Nothing is worse than having a perfect shooting opportunity but the puck is on edge and you end up sending the puck off in some wild direction.
- newsbinator 6y ago
  Not to worry, based on the videos in the article, the players are taping up the hole, at least 2/3rds of it.

86 points by pencerw 6y ago

>If you’ve been paying (extremely close) attention to the NHL playoffs, you may have noticed a weird-looking stick with a hole in the blade. The hole apparently allows for two different properties: stiffness above it and flexibility below. According to Bauer, this produces a slingshot effect -- almost like a smaller version of the stick’s shaft (which, as explained in this video, bends almost unbelievably to whip the puck forward). These days, ‘twigs’ are made of carbon fiber, though as the hockey lingo suggests, wood used to be the material of choice. The evolution of the hockey stick from wood to carbon fiber gives us insight into a material property called resilience. >Resilience is basically the opposite of damping. High resilience materials bounce back with most of the energy that you put into them. As Stevel Vogel illustrates in Cats’ Paws and Catapults, spider silk is a great example of low resilience material. “A web of high resilience would, like a trampoline, tend to fling the prey back out.” Vogel goes on to note that “resilience management highlights the dichotomy between nature and human technologies.” Natural materials, like wood, tend to have lower resilience whereas man-made materials, like carbon fiber, tend to have higher resilience. >You can see why carbon fiber, with its higher resilience, has overtaken wood as material du jour; more of the energy you put into the stick comes out on the puck for a faster shot. But a stick can be too resilient/springy -- when receiving a pass, you don’t want the puck to bounce off the stick away from you. Players call it “feel”. Some damping is beneficial, as shown in this slo-mo video of a stick that combats springiness with a urethane insert. These hole-y sticks try to solve the problem a different way, adding a softer spring into the mix with the aim of providing “feel” without taking away energy from the shot. So, is it worth buying the latest in hockey tech - a stick with a hole in it for $450? If you’re a beer leaguer like me, clapping your usual head-hunting bombs twenty feet wide of the net, probably not.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

evo_9 6y ago

It's been crazy watching the evolution of hockey sticks from wood to aluminum shafts, then to carbon-fiber. The prices have steadily skyrocketed, but it's hard to deny the incredible effects of just these material design changes. There are of course trade-offs, most notable being the tendency of these new carbon fiber sticks breaking without much warning, or apparent wear. The speed at which the shot comes off the stick now is pretty mind-boggling, too, which makes it easy for me to justify 300+ for a stick. They tend to either break soon, or last a lot longer than old style wood sticks, or aluminum + wood blades, etc. I'm eager to try out one of these new designs myself but the pricing is just absurd for a beer league even if I'm playing in the top non-pro league in Colorado, and one of the teams I play against is all retired well known pros. Like anything it'll come down as the process is refined and likely this approach is adopted from top-to-bottom. Excited to try one out for sure!

cuddlybacon 6y ago
I was in youth league hockey as carbon fiber sticks went from unheard of to ubiquitous. Carbon sticks failed in a spectacular way, but wood stills would also fail. They wouldn't break in two during a slapshot, but they would generally split along the bottom of the blade. If refs noticed it, you could get a penalty. By the time my parents caved in and bought a wood stick, I was at the point of consuming one new stick nearly every time I was on the ice. At that point, the higher upfront cost ended up being worth it.
- cperciva 6y ago
  If refs noticed it, you could get a penalty. I'm curious, what penalty gets called here? I wasn't aware there was a "your equipment fell apart" penalty.
  - cuddlybacon 6y ago
    I think the penalty was something to do with equipment safety. I played in Canada, but this ruling seems quite similar to what was in effect for us: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084649-rule-605-broken-stick https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084649-rule-605... I think the worry is a broken stick has a chance of producing something sharp that can injure others. I think it is more of a worry when the break is along the shaft of a wooden stick (as you could stab someone, you're basically wielding a spear) but even a split along the bottom of a wooden stick's blade has the potential to lose splinters.

geogra4 6y ago

Wonder if hockey will either go the way of Tennis (where technology has rapidly changed how the game has been played) or baseballe - where the bats are always wood.

docbrown 6y ago
I don’t think they should or ever will step away from wood bats. It’s one of the few things that levels the playing field for all batters; instead letting brute force be the power behind the contact. Aluminum and corked bats would ultimately give an unfair advantage to the user as compared to a wood slugger. It’s fine in minor league and collegiate sports as they do not follow the MLB’s stricter regulations but if they plan to aim for the major leagues, they should start training with wood. — On second thought, I think the only time there would be a change is if there were a noticeable impact on the environment and the amount of word being cut to produce bats. But since America’s trademark sport is baseball, I do not see this happening any time soon.
- prh8 6y ago
  Aluminum and corked bats also become a player safety issue in the majors. It's already a problem at all levels honestly, but the balance would be far more dangerous increasing already high major league exit velocities.
  - icelancer 6y ago
    BBCOR has solved this problem with metal bats; their COR is identical to wood bats (and likely worse in the aggregate).
- aaronblohowiak 6y ago
  Wood products harvested sustainably protect forest lands by increasing their economic viability. If forests lose economic value from timber, they are more likely to be clearcut for agriculture. Edit: maple is also one of the most prevalent commercial timbers in USA, is native in most parts of the country and bat usage is so small a percent of maple consumption as to be effectively 0.

rsync 6y ago

What am I looking at here ? Is there, in fact, a web-based reference copy of a mailchimp brokered mailing list ? Do all mailchimp campaigns auto-generate these pages ? I have never seen this before. I've never considered a mailing list, or mailchimp campaign, for rsync.net but for some reason those same things with a bloggy web page backing store behind it weirdly appeals to me ...

zrail 6y ago
Most marketing email service providers provide something like this. If you've seen a link at the top of an email that says "view this in your web browser" you're probably looking at a link to a page hosted and generated by the ESP.
zerocrates 6y ago
"View this in your browser" or "click here if you're having trouble viewing this message" type links seem to be very common on this mailing list type stuff, so I think it's a fairly standard feature.
pencerw 6y ago
You're looking at The Prepared (theprepared.org/newsletter), a weekly newsletter about manufacturing and other stuff! It's sent via Mailchimp, which automatically creates an archive URL for every email campaign you send.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  I've set up MailChimp campaigns several times - traditional sales lists, transactional stuff, software update notifications - and never thought of using it as a hosted/linkable newsletter. The "view this in your browser" link was always personalized for tracking, not semantic, IIRC. It did include the actual content of "Hello, {first name} {last name}!" tags, which obviously wouldn't work here for every unique reader. How long does this stick around? As long as you have a MailChimp account? I guess I assumed that the URL was unique per-user and would be deleted after 30 days, because the primary use case of Mailchimp seems to be not-quite-spam "We're having a sale!" bulk campaigns.

rdiddly 6y ago

Got distracted by the new post already added above this one, about the collapse of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge. In particular, other than its being a rare example of a spectacular bridge collapse that was more-or-less caught on film, I'm not sure it's a great example for an engineering ethics class. Because the most likely cause of its failure wasn't any particular ethical consideration, but the interaction of phenomema (wind vortex shedding and structural resonance) about which nobody had a lot of experience or knowledge at the time. Time goes by and we learn from the successes and the failures. Almost every major earthquake ends up pushing a few changes to the building codes. We now return you to your regularly scheduled hockey-related program.

nl 6y ago
(For people wondering what this comment is about, apparently the URL of the story got changed, and the previous version had something about Tacoma Narrows Bridge on the same page)

pugworthy 6y ago

I got a strong "Nimbus 5000" vibe reading this. It's pretty easy to read this and replace "stick" with "broom", "ice" with "arena", "quaffle" with "puck", and "hockey" with "quidditch" - and have it all sort of sound right.

scott31 6y ago
That is because hockey is nonsense, just like quidditch
- pugworthy 6y ago
  Kind of like how a totally OT comment about the Tacoma Narrows bridge doesn't get down voted...
  - pencerw 6y ago
    it wasn't OT before the mods changed the URL that i originally posted: https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-prepared-4ydgzm58vl https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-prepared-4ydgzm58vl
    - pugworthy 6y ago
      Ah thanks for the clarification. It didn't per se make sense, but was related based on the final bit.

tyingq 6y ago

There's a pretty strong tradition of wrapping tape around the blade that I imagine is hard to break. I wonder how much that hurts the supposed benefits.

takk309 6y ago
The taping method is very player specific. For example, I like to tape from about an inch from the toe all the way back to the heel. Others, like just a few wraps near the toe. For me, a hole in the blade would have no aero benefits but for others, it could matter. The other benefits of the hole as they pertain to the blade flex would still be noticed regardless of taping style.

avonmach 6y ago

This reminds me slightly of RBK's O-Stick.

CoolGuySteve 6y ago

Puck bounce is already a weird randomization. It seems like have a hole in your blade that might hook the edge of the puck would only increase that randomness.

takk309 6y ago
That is an interesting thought. Settling a puck is a skill that all players have to develop at some point. Nothing is worse than having a perfect shooting opportunity but the puck is on edge and you end up sending the puck off in some wild direction.
newsbinator 6y ago
Not to worry, based on the videos in the article, the players are taping up the hole, at least 2/3rds of it.