
Evgeny Kuznetsov practices with Bauer stick that has hole in the blade - pencerw
https://russianmachineneverbreaks.com/2020/07/17/evgeny-kuznetsov-practices-with-bauer-stick-that-has-hole-in-the-blade/
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evo_9
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
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.

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cperciva
_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.

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evanspa
I think it's just called the "broken stick" rule. Specifically, if you break
your stick, you HAVE to drop it on the ice immediately and be done with it. If
you even skate back to the bench holding it, you can get called for a penalty.

~~~
burnte
How does the broken stick get off the field of play if you're not allowed to
carry it off?

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evo_9
It's actually not quite so simply as the ref near it grabbing it. Depending on
the play, and where the broken stick is at, the ref may elect to leave it be.
I've seen broken sticks get 'accidentally' kicked/nudge near, or in front of
the net which causes a sort of clean pass prevention '6th player'. The ref is
generally reluctant to get too into the middle area of the play so a broken
stick can become a sort of extra player out there. It's a kind funny/unique
situation that doesn't happen that often.

~~~
takk309
Intentionally moving a broken stick to block or possibly block the puck is
also a penalty. It is one of the more "judgment call" type calls a ref can
make.

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geogra4
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.

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
Hockey seems to be constantly evolving both its technologies and its rules.

As an example of this (other than the new sticks being tested in the article),
prior to the pandemic the NHL was set to introduce a new puck for the playoffs
that would "will transmit data 60 times per second, including location, speed,
acceleration and deceleration and distance travelled." There's similar tech
ready to be rolled out for jerseys. The end goal being for advanced analytics
to be able to map how fast everything is going and how the game moves, as well
as to possibly aid in goal review (which is difficult with the shape of a
puck, unlike say soccer/football with its round ball). They tested it at the
All-Star game and teams have been practicing with it, but the league decided
to hold off on it to reduce the potential point of failures during their
return to play.

Source: [https://www.tsn.ca/nhl-s-new-puck-will-premiere-on-
opening-n...](https://www.tsn.ca/nhl-s-new-puck-will-premiere-on-opening-
night-of-playoffs-1.1452122)

~~~
aaronblohowiak
location and speed at the same time? now THAT is interesting..

~~~
wruza
Jokes aside, that must be a serious problem in a game where they hit the puck
with a wooden planck.

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rdiddly
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
(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)

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CoolGuySteve
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
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.

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tyingq
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
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.

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

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rsync
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 ...

~~~
dang
We've changed the URL from [https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-
prepared-4ydgzm58vl](https://mailchi.mp/theprepared/the-prepared-4ydgzm58vl)
to the article that it points to, which seems to have the most information
about the story.

I don't think an issue of a newsletter which contains a paragraph about one
thing among lots of other things, plus promotional padding, really counts as
an article about that thing for HN purposes. It seems more like an attempt to
promote the newsletter than to share interesting information about hockey
sticks.

~~~
pencerw
IMO this ends up being way more advertorial (for Bauer) and lacks all of the
engineering context (urethane inserts! damping! "the dichotomy between nature
and human technologies"!). But, understood.

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dang
Perhaps; I haven't read that closely. Obviously it's great if you're writing
something better about a topic, but there needs to be a specific URL to what
you've specifically written about it.

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pencerw
wait, just to be clear - you changed the title and URL without actually
reading the thing that I linked to?

~~~
dang
I read your newsletter. I didn't read as much of the other article.

Is it really unclear what the issue here is? The issue is that the OP was too
promotional. Indeed your account history on HN has been, basically, entirely
promotional. That's not really what the site is for. This is in the
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

On HN, the idea is for people to submit stories that they ran across and
personally found intellectually interesting, not because they have something
to promote. It's fine to post your own work occasionally, as long as it's
interspersed with interesting posts from other sources. But if you only submit
promotionally, it feels like you're not participating as a community member.

To be fair, the stuff you've submitted has been good, certainly not spam. But
the newsletter thing was a step too far.

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pugworthy
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.

