How NHL Goalies Tape Their Sticks, and Why

Ask a forward about his stick and he will talk about the blade: the curve, the tape, how the puck feels coming off it. Ask an NHL goalie and the conversation drifts up the shaft. The stories goalies tell about their sticks are mostly about the top 30 centimetres, where the blocker hand lives: how thick the handle is, how the paddle narrows into the shaft, and how big the knob should be. The blade gets attention too, but often for a reason a skater would never think of. The goalie needs to be able to see it.

This piece looks at what current and recent NHL goalies have said about their sticks, and why they do it. If you want to tape your own goal stick, our goalie tutorial walks you through it step by step.

The one thing the rulebook insists on

Goalies have a lot of freedom. The NHL rulebook allows adhesive tape of any colour, anywhere on the stick, to reinforce it or improve puck control. Goalies get one extra requirement. Rule 10.2 says the top of a goalie stick must carry a knob of white tape, or another covering the league approves, at least half an inch thick. Skaters have no knob rule at all.

The white comes from history. Mike McKenna, a former NHL goalie writing for Daily Faceoff, explains that the rule predates video review. Goal judges sat behind the net, and a black knob could be mistaken for a puck. When the rule was written, players could only choose black or white tape, so the league chose white.

The rule has no penalty attached. A stick with the wrong knob is simply declared unfit for play and must be changed. That lack of teeth may explain why coloured knobs keep turning up:

• Frederik Andersen was made to cover blue knob tape with white in a 2017 preseason game with Toronto. In November 2021, now with Carolina, he was flagged again in Anaheim, this time for red. The officials taped over it during a stoppage.
• Ben Scrivens had a fluorescent orange knob in Edmonton. In December 2014, Kings coach Darryl Sutter pointed it out to the referees during a shootout, apparently hoping to rattle him. Scrivens stopped every shot and the Oilers won.
• Anton Khudobin was caught with coloured knob tape by Calgary during the 2019-20 playoffs. McKenna noted in 2021 that his sticks had a green knob again.

McKenna’s own story shows why teams bother. Playing in the AHL for the Portland Pirates, his team noticed Malcolm Subban’s black knob and saved the complaint for the third period of an important game. He admits he doesn’t remember whether it worked. A knob violation costs nothing on the scoresheet, but it can buy a stoppage or put a thought in a goalie’s head.

The other blade rules are fixed: an NHL goalie blade can be no longer than 15.5 inches and no taller than 3.5 inches, except at the heel, where it can reach 4.5 inches. See our tape types guide for the materials goalies use to build their knobs and grips.

The handle is where goalies get personal

In January 2024, NHL.com’s Kevin Woodley surveyed how goalies customize their sticks. The common thread was the grip, not the tape on the blade.

Henrik Lundqvist used a squared-off shoulder where the paddle narrows into the shaft. Woodley wrote that it let him keep his blocker hand relaxed, and InGoal Magazine says it kept his blocker square to shooters.

Sergei Bobrovsky uses a steep shoulder that narrows gradually from lower on the stick. The shape gives him the blocker angle he wants and lets him slide his hand down onto the paddle. Other goalies have copied it. Chris Driedger took the Bobrovsky shoulder and cut a notch in the bottom edge himself, so he could wrap a finger around the stick with the paddle flat on the ice without losing its seal. Warrior later built the notch into his pattern. Spencer Knight showed InGoal a stick that borrows the same sloped shoulder.

Marc-André Fleury added a rare convex slope on top of his grip after Carey Price gave him a stick that had been shaved down. He said his thumb used to feel stuck and his stick sat too far from his pad in the butterfly.

Carey Price helped popularize shorter shafts around 2017, and he thickened his handle with layers of stick tape and grip tape. Martin Jones, who has bigger hands, uses a similar build-up. Price has also made taping a stick part of an annual goalie camp day with Eli Wilson. InGoal reports that he tapes a stick in the dressing room with the kids watching, partly to get them talking before a question-and-answer session.

Knob size is a choice, not a rule

The rulebook sets a minimum knob thickness, not a maximum. Braden Holtby went big. InGoal described his tape jobs as “enormous” and said the large knob makes it easier to recover a stick he has lost. Most of his technique, InGoal adds, dates from long before he reached the NHL. Knight’s knob reminded InGoal of Price’s, and he says it helps him place his hand. Devon Levi showed InGoal what it called the most unique knob-taping method it had seen, and Levi framed it as a way to save time.

For more on knob builds, see our knob styles.

Why some goalies blacken white tape

Some goalies start with white blade tape and then deliberately darken it.

Carter Hart rubs a puck over his white blade tape. He began with the bottom edge and now blackens the whole blade. He told NHL.com it helps him handle the puck and keeps ice from bonding to the blade, though he allowed that part of it may be mental.

Linus Ullmark puts black marks on the top, bottom and corner of the blade. His reason is simple: on white ice, a white blade is hard to see. Ullmark scored a goal from his own end against Vancouver in February 2023 with a custom Bauer stick, so the blade clearly does its job.

That reasoning is the reverse of a skater’s. A forward might darken tape to make the puck harder to pick up. A goalie darkens it so that he can see his own stick.

Goalies read your tape, too

Goalies don’t just tape their own sticks. They study yours. In an October 2025 NHL.com feature, several said they can identify shooters by their tape. Montreal’s Sam Montembeault said his visual memory lets him pick out a shooter’s tape colour and hand. Seattle’s Joey Daccord said most goalies identify players by tape colour and whether or not the toe is taped. Matt Murray said a shooter who changes tape can catch him off guard for a moment, and that he notices right away.

Not everyone works that way. Jonathan Quick, after 19 seasons, said he would struggle to identify some of his own teammates by their tape and pays more attention to where the puck sits relative to the shooter’s feet. Igor Shesterkin said the questions that matter are whether a shot is a one-timer and what kind of player is shooting. Jakub Dobes said he tracks only whether a shooter is left or right-handed.

The skater side of this story, from Ovechkin to Pastrňák, is in our player stories.

What it means for you

Little of this is about doing it “right.” Each goalie builds a stick around his own hand, stance and habits. The pattern across the NHL is clear, though:

• Start at the top. The handle, shoulder and knob shape how the stick sits in your blocker. That’s where pros make their biggest changes.
• Keep the knob white if you play under NHL or IIHF-style rules. It costs nothing to comply and avoids a stoppage at a bad moment.
• Think about visibility. If you lose sight of your blade on white ice, a few dark marks, as Ullmark does, are a cheap fix.

One safety note: if you shave or reshape a handle the way Fleury and Driedger did, cut away from your body and your hand, and never tape over a crack in a stick. Tape hides damage. It doesn’t fix it.

Want to try a knob or a blade pattern before you tape it? Build it in the Tape Lab.