Understanding Hockey Stick Flex
In fancy scientific terms, a hockey stick's flex rating refers to the pounds of force needed to make a hockey stick shaft bend, or "flex," one inch. Hockey players usually refer to that as how "whippy" a stick is. The lower the flex rating, the easier it is to flex the stick and vice versa.
So why is flex important?
When a player shoots the puck, the stick essentially acts as a spring. When the stick unbends and snaps back into place, it accelerates the puck toward the target. If a player's flex is too high, he or she won't be able to bend the stick properly to generate that storage of energy.
Advancements in hockey stick technology over the past 10 to 15 years have increasingly pushed prices higher. Youth and Junior sticks range from about $50 to $199, Intermediate sticks top out around $269, and adult hockey sticks are hovering at just about the $300 mark. For many people this is not an appealing price.
Snip Show Hockey Sticks is Born
One player, Michael Rainisch and his business partner, Sergio Rozenblat, spoke to manufacturers about developing low flex carbon fiber hockey sticks. "Quality of the stick is very important, and so is a good price point," said Rainisch. "This is an expensive sport and we needed to get the starter stick—the 20 flex—into kids' hands for less than 90 bucks." They finally landed on a manufacturer that could provide the best of both worlds and ordered a small batch of beta products to hand out to a select group of players that could provide quality feedback.
Snipe Show offers four different model hockey sticks that correspond to a different flex rating:
To enhance quality and durability, Snipe Show uses a higher quality carbon fiber weave in the shafts of its hockey sticks than other low-flex hockey stick manufacturers. Where most manufacturers use a unidirectional core, which is also more expensive, Snipe Show uses a 12k carbon fiber weave in its 30 and 40-flex sticks, and an 18k weave in its 50-flex option. Lamplighter, the company's 20-flex option, uses a unidirectional core "because there's no way to put a 12k or 18k weave on the shaft and keep its flexibility," said Rainisch. "Most kids that small won't snap the stick," he concluded. Each stick also comes with a 30-day warranty.
By Mitchell Pangle
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