Black Tape vs White Tape: What the Pros Actually Use

Walk into any minor hockey dressing room and you’ll find someone with an opinion on tape colour. Black hides the puck. White shows you where the puck hit. Black is for snipers. White is for people who like a clean stick. Most of it gets passed down from older brothers and coaches. Very little of it has ever been written down by the people who play at the top of the game.

We went looking for what NHL players and goalies have actually said about it on the record. The short version: there is no winner, and the most interesting answers come from goalies.

If you’re new to the materials themselves, start with our guide to tape types.

What the rulebook says

For skaters, nothing. NHL Rule 10.1 allows adhesive tape of any colour to be wrapped around the stick anywhere, to reinforce it or to improve control of the puck. Black, white, red, rainbow or a mix are all legal.

Goalies are the exception, and only at the top of the stick. Rule 10.2 requires a knob of white tape, or another approved covering, at least half an inch thick. Former NHL goalie Mike McKenna explains why in Daily Faceoff. Before video review, goal judges sat behind the net, and a black knob could be mistaken for a puck. At the time players had only black or white to choose from, so the league picked white.

That’s the only place the rulebook takes a side in the colour debate, and it has nothing to do with the blade.

Black came first

The surviving sticks from the Original Six era are mostly black. An early-1960s Gordie Howe game-used stick sold by Classic Auctions still has its original black tape on both the blade and the handle.

Some players went further than tape. The Washington Capitals Virtual Hockey Museum, which catalogues game-used sticks from the club’s history, notes that Guy Charron painted his blade black in the late 1970s to make the puck harder for goalies to see, and says many players of the 1970s and early 1980s did the same. Peter Bondra was still painting his blade black in 1999-2000.

By the late 1990s, white had become common. A Steve Yzerman stick from Detroit’s back-to-back Cup years has white cloth tape on the blade, with red cloth tape over white on the handle.

The case for black

The oldest argument for black is about the goalie. If the puck and the blade are the same colour, the theory goes, it’s harder to tell exactly where the puck is on the stick, or when it’s about to leave.

The Capitals museum makes that case directly for Alex Ovechkin, noting that in 2009-10 he sometimes blacked out his tape to make it harder to pick up the puck. RMNB describes his usual routine: he starts with white tape and rubs a puck over it until the blade is black. At a 2022 training camp practice he left a single white stripe through the middle, and nobody, including gear experts, could say for sure why.

The other argument is feel. Troy Murray, the former Blackhawks forward who now broadcasts their games, told Second City Hockey in 2023 that he used black. He liked the look of it better and felt he could stickhandle better with it, although he thought his shot was better with white. That’s one player’s view, not a finding, but it is the kind of trade-off players describe.

The case for white

The most common reason players give for white is that it’s what they’ve always used.

In the same Second City Hockey survey, four current Blackhawks named their colour and all four used white. Lukas Reichel said he’s used to it and once tried black during a slump in the AHL. Philipp Kurashev said he’s played with white all his life. MacKenzie Entwistle wraps as much white tape as he can so people can see his blade. Jason Dickinson uses a thin white layer, doubled at the toe because faceoffs chew it up.

You can see the same pull in the women’s game. During USA Hockey’s Olympic coverage in February 2026, Hannah Bilka and Laila Edwards were each asked to pick between white and black tape. Both said white.

And when a player wants to change something mid-game, white is often what goes on. In October 2025, Ottawa’s Tim Stützle had fumbled the puck for two periods against Boston. Assistant coach Daniel Alfredsson told him to change his tape, so he wrapped the whole blade in white, using more than usual. He scored twice in the third period of a 7-2 win.

What goalies think about your colour

Goalies are the only people the “hide the puck” argument is aimed at, so it’s worth hearing from them.

In an October 2025 NHL.com feature, several goalies said tape is part of how they identify shooters. Seattle’s Joey Daccord said most goalies pick out players by tape colour and whether the toe is taped. Matt Murray said that when a shooter changes his tape, he notices right away. Jonathan Quick, on the other hand, said he would struggle to identify some teammates by their tape, and he watches where the puck sits relative to the shooter’s feet instead.

None of them said black tape made the puck invisible. What they described is recognition: colour tells them who is shooting, and that tells them what to expect.

Goalies also use colour on their own sticks, for the opposite reason. Linus Ullmark marks the top, bottom and corner of his white blade in black so he can see it against white ice. Carter Hart rubs a puck over his white tape until the blade is black, and he says it helps him handle the puck, though he allows that some of that may be mental.

The modern compromise: white, then black

Ovechkin and Hart both land in the same place. They start with white tape and darken it with a puck. Players also mix colours on purpose. DK Pittsburgh Sports reported in 2020 that Jamie Benn uses three or four strips across the middle of his blade, in the opposite colour to the blade so they stand out. Jan Drozg, a Penguins prospect at the time, ran black tape from the start of the blade to around the middle, with white the rest of the way. He admitted the look doesn’t help him on the ice and called it mostly mental.

That word comes up a lot. Bryan Rust told DK Pittsburgh that tape choices are about comfort and confidence. Nobody we found claimed a measurable edge for either colour, and we found no study that compared them.

So which should you use?

Use the one that makes you confident. The record suggests a few things worth knowing:

• Neither colour is illegal on a skater’s blade. If you’re a goalie, keep the knob white under NHL and similar rules.
• Goalies notice colour, but mostly to recognize you. Switching colours might buy you a moment of surprise, as Murray describes. It won’t make the puck disappear.
• Mixing is fine. Plenty of pros start with white, darken it, or combine both.

You can try black, white and two-tone jobs side by side in the Tape Lab, and read how individual players made their choice in our player stories.