
Teen goalie designs pads to trick shots - nickb
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/01/25/teen_goalie_designs_pads_to_trick_shots/
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ojbyrne
Smart idea. Since hockey is generally trying to increase scoring, I bet it
gets banned.

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wallflower
This reminded me of an 'experiment' with a morbidly obese goalie.

"The only way to fully test this theory was to get an NHL team to shoot
against the faux fatso..."

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119143109983647814.html>

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ojbyrne
That's a great article. One of the counter-arguments

"Knowing we were going to play against him, we would take some extra practice
and make sure we could hit those holes."

is fallacious, because it ignores the fact that the five guys on the other
team are also going to practice to ensure that you can't hit those holes. I.
e. there's going to be a defenseman on each side of him filling the (very
small) gaps.

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teuobk
As a goalie, I'm skeptical about claims that those pads will fool players. In
fact, one school of thought says that pads should be dark so that the goalie
appears as large and imposing as possible.

Regardless of their effectiveness, I think they look cool.

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thorax
It only needs to confuse them for a split second once in a while to be a net
gain (no pun intended).

Even if it's just misjuding where they begin and end, their motion, distance,
etc. They're not going to be like an invisibility cloak, but any legal
performance gain would be cool.

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newy
Neat concept, but I'm pretty impressed by how the design turned out. Credit
should go to Stomp in this case, looks like they executed the concept quite
well. Goalies are a special bunch -- I suppose spending more than half your
time standing alone leaves you plenty of time to explore your artistic side
(see the great masks out there) and think up ways to gain an edge on your
opponent.

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mmc
First time I've seen a blocker design for visual confusion, but some existing
leg pad designs do incorporate this kind of visual trick to attempt to make
the 5-hole look bigger.

Here's a long list of thumbnails of pads:
[http://www.hockeyworld.com/catHome.ihtml?catID=30&shop=0...](http://www.hockeyworld.com/catHome.ihtml?catID=30&shop=0&snum=1&enum=84&p=0&sortBy=new)

Note that while some just try to look cool, there is a common pattern of
diagonal stripes from the inside of the knee to the outside of the foot - when
you go down into a butterfly, the idea is that this makes it look like your
knees are bent more than they are, and the five-hole is bigger than it is,
because the insides of the foot and shin are white like the inside of the
crease.

The Vaughan VPG 6* look the most like they're trying to fool the eye.
Interestingly, others come close but ruin it by letting a dark pattern repeat
right at the inside of the toe.

I thought that this was a Patrick Roy innovation, but couldn't remember where
I read about it first.

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dfranke
Is this site crashing Firefox for anyone else?

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VinzO
I use firefox 3 and it is not crashing with this site

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daveambrose
Anyone have pictures of the pads?

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gravitycop
_Anyone have pictures of the pads?_

Besides the pic at the article, that is also here?:
<http://news.google.com/news?q=hockey+goalie+pads>

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daveambrose
Oh, I read the article on my BlackBerry so I didn't see the pic. Thanks for
pointing this out.

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keltecp11
Give this kid a job. He's more than a Hockey Player... He's an
Entrepreneurial-athlete in the making.

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eru
Doesn't need a job, then. Will make his own.

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Allocator2008
Last time I was in Vegas watching a fight a hockey game broke out. Hate it
when that happens.

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mrtron
I don't know why you are getting massively downvoted other than being a bit
off topic.

Anyways, fighting is an important part of hockey. Hockey is a very physical
sport, and fighting keeps things clean. Players enforce a whole set of rules
themselves through fighting.

For example, even in a non-contact hockey league, you don't do anything stupid
like cross-checking someone to the head because they will get their ass
kicked.

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tdavis
I downvoted him because (a) it is a worn out cliche of a joke and (b) I played
hockey for over 10 years and only got in a couple fights and did not see many
more than that. The game is not about fighting. That isn't why it's played and
it isn't why it should be watched. Only the ignorant seem to think otherwise.

