The History of Hockey Sticks

The hockey stick — and indeed, the very game of hockey — was invented by the Mi'Kmaq, a First Nations people indigenous to Canada's Atlantic provinces. More specifically, Mi'Kmaq carvers in Nova Scotia created the first ice hockey sticks in the 1830s, which were referred to as “Mik-Mak sticks.” They remained popular until the 1930s and were typically carved from birch or hornbeam wood. As ice hockey grew in popularity throughout North America, maple emerged as the preferred wood for hockey sticks. In the 1960s, Chicago Blackhawks legend Stan Mikita began experimenting with the blade of his stick. While taking practice shots with teammate and fellow Hall of Fame inductee Bobby Hull, Mikita broke the blade on his stick, creating a curve. He took a shot with the cracked stick and liked the results that the curve produced. Mikita and Hull continued to experiment with curved blades, which they referred to as “banana blades,” and soon began to use them during games. Notably, long-time New York Rangers center Andy Bathgate claims that he was the first to use curved blades in the NHL after having used them as a child. He asserts that he allowed Mikita to borrow one of his curved-blade hockey sticks when the Blackhawks were in New York. Whether Mikita or Bathgate started the trend of curved blades, they quickly caught on in the NHL — so much so that the organization had to limit how much curve a blade could have on it because of the tremendous lift and power the curved blades afforded to players taking shots with sharply curved blades. In the last 30 years or so, the composition of hockey sticks has evolved from wood to aluminum and then to modern composite materials like fiberglass, carbon fiber, and Kevlar. Today, virtually all NHL hockey players use composite sticks with some level of curve in the blade, and these technological advances in equipment have allowed today’s athletes to take their game to new heights — often literally, considering the soaring shots that are regularly seen during games!