Steven Santini does his best to not get too attached to his hockey sticks. At any point, a stick could break or lose its luster.
But that doesn’t mean the 23-year-old New Jersey Devils defenseman skimps on making sure every detail is perfect with each of his sticks.
“Taking care of your sticks is so important,” Santini said. “You have to make sure you’re comfortable with them. Hockey is your job, your livelihood. Over the years I’ve gotten more attentive to it.”
Santini, who played three seasons at Boston College and has a right-handed shot, currently uses Bauer’s Supreme 2S. He always upgrades to the company’s latest model when it’s released.
It’s a far cry from how he was when he was a kid growing up in Mahopac, N.Y.
Santini used wooden Sherwood and Jofa sticks until he was 9 years old, when his father, Steven, forced him to switch to the composite Easton Synergy.
“I was really resistant to it,” Santini remembered. “My dad told me wood is going to be extinct in a few years. Sure enough, he was right.”
After using the Synergy, Santini went through a CCM/Reebok phase in his early teens. That lasted until he joined the U.S. National Team Development Program at age 16, when he switched to Bauer. He’s been a loyal Bauer user ever since.
“The reps are really good to me and have treated me well over the years, through junior, college and pro,” Santini said. “They give me exactly what I want.”
As a bigger player at 6-2, 205 pounds, Santini uses a flex between 95 and 100 with a mid kick point. The shaft is the traditional rectangle, and he has a regular grip.
The blade features a toe curve and is on the taller side.
“The taller blade makes it easier to knock down or settle bouncing pucks, which is important for a defenseman,” Santini explained. “I used to use a heel curve, but I find with the toe curve you get so much more on your shot and it’s easier to make a saucer pass.”
One of the latest alterations the blueliner has made to his sticks has to do with their length. During the summer, he was touching the puck a lot, and he made his sticks shorter. He continued cutting them during training camp.
However, that recently changed. After he was hit in the face with a puck at the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 20 and suffered a broken jaw, Santini was out of commission for two weeks. Upon his return to the rink, he felt his sticks were super short, so he started using longer ones.
That will likely change in due time.
“Ask me in two months and I’ll probably be back to a shorter one,” Santini predicted. “It’s all personal preference though. It’s a feel thing and a confidence thing. I don’t believe in having a set length.”
The last detail pertaining to his sticks’ length is that he uses a four-inch extension.
Santini also has altered how he tapes his sticks.
“My whole life I used black friction tape, the old-school, double-sided tape, and I would tape from the heel to an inch from the toe, pat it down and wax it,” he revealed. “Now I use regular thick white tape, heel all the way to the toe, and wax it.”
Santini uses thinner white tape for the knob of his stick and puts baby powder on it so it doesn’t get too sticky.
“I don’t like my top glove to be locked in too much,” he noted.
Santini uses the same stick in practices as he does in games and goes through about two dozen sticks per season.
“If I go a couple of weeks and the stick doesn’t break, I’ll get a new one because it’s probably losing its pop and its feel at that point,” Santini concluded. “I want to make sure my sticks are always 100 percent.”
As he should, since hockey is his livelihood.
In Mathew Barzal’s case, one millimeter is the difference between using a hockey stick and tossing it aside.
The 21-year-old New York Islanders center and reigning Calder Trophy winner always uses the latest edition of the CCM RibCor, which is currently the Trigger 3D, and will get his hands on anywhere between 60 and 70 sticks a season, but he will use only half of those.
“If I cut a stick too short, it’s done, it’s gone, next,” he stated. “It has to be exact; a millimeter off feels extremely different.”
At the same time, if Barzal likes the feel of his stick, he’ll use it in practices and in games until he can’t use it anymore.
“Until it dies,” he emphasized.
Barzal’s always been passionate and particular about his sticks.
As a kid, he remembers using an Easton Z-Bubble, a TPS and a Viper Fury. When he was a little older, he became a “Bauer guy.” He switched to CCM once he started playing Midget hockey and hasn’t looked back.
“CCM does a great job with me,” Barzal said. “Shout out to them; I don’t think anyone else could take care of me as well as they do.”
Barzal, who has a right-handed shot, uses sticks that start out with an 85 flex and cuts them by two inches. He uses a nipple grip and his sticks have a rounded C shaft, which the 6-0, 187-pounder feels is better suited for stickhandling.
Barzal switched to his current curve — a heel curve with a square toe — when he was a rookie in the Western Hockey League with the Seattle Thunderbirds. He adds that it’s more of a “straight curve” as opposed to a “shooter’s curve” and allows him to “make plays,” which is more his style.
“I like the way it feels when I’m stickhandling and when I’m turning,” he explained. “It’s good for passing, especially making saucer passes. Because it’s fairly straight it’s good on the backhand, too.”
Barzal likes to heat the blade of his stick to soften it. He also spray paints the bottom of his stick black.
“This way, when I’m looking down, the whole thing is black,” Barzal said. “I don’t like looking at color.”
He also sands the top and bottom of the blade to round it a little bit. This expedites the adjustment process when he transitions from one stick to the next.
“I use sticks right to the end and then I go to a brand new one, which feels very different,” Barzal said. “Honestly, sometimes I’ll smack it against a wall 20-30 times and flex it a ton just to break it in.”
When it comes to taping his stick, Barzal uses thick black tape and goes from heel to toe, starting a bit higher on the heel to form a “sock.”
After he’s finished taping his blade, he presses down on it with a puck so there are no loose ends. Finally, he tapes the knob of his stick with one layer of black tape.
That last part of the procedure sounds simple, but as the Islanders staff knows, nothing about any of the work that goes into perfecting Barzal’s sticks can be labeled as such.
“The trainers hate it when it comes to my sticks,” Barzal concluded, “just because I’m so picky.”
