Inside the Equipment Room: How NHL Teams Handle Sticks

Every NHL stick you see on television has been handled by someone you never see. Before it reaches the ice, it has been ordered, unpacked, cut to length, often taped, tracked, and stacked where an equipment manager can reach it in the second after the player’s last stick snaps. Tape is the player’s business. Almost everything around it belongs to the equipment room.

This is how that room works, drawn from what NHL equipment staff have said in team features and interviews.

The scale: a stick a game, and then some

The simplest number comes from Carolina. Hurricanes equipment manager Nick Roy told the team’s website in 2023 that the club plans on one stick per player per game. With about 20 players over 82 games, that’s more than 1,600 sticks a season, before training camp.

Habits vary. Roy said Brett Pesce, Jordan Staal and Dmitry Orlov used a new stick every game, while others went through about two sticks every three games. In Carolina each player starts a game with a fresh stick and keeps two from earlier games as backups, unless one breaks. When a stick is retired from games, it becomes a practice stick. When a practice stick is retired, it goes to a yard sale, community relations or auction. Players choose when to retire a stick by feel, not age, Roy said. They’re watching for the fibreglass breaking down and a flex that no longer feels right.

Ottawa sees the same pattern. Senators assistant equipment manager Ian Cox told the software company Kinaxis in 2025 that the team averages about one new stick per player per game. Some players don’t tape a new stick for every game, and a few tape more than one.

Sticks are expensive. In 2017 the Las Vegas Sun put the average NHL stick at $185 and said players go through 60 to 125 sticks a year, which can add up to more than $23,000 for one player.

The stick room

The Minnesota Wild once opened its stick room for a team feature. It was an auxiliary room deep inside Xcel Energy Center, stocked with saws, blow torches, heat guns, files, spray cans, vises, sanders and rolls of tape.

Assistant equipment manager Matt Benz explained that every player’s stick is different. Staff can identify whose stick is whose from the top two inches of the handle alone, because no two knobs or tape jobs are the same.

Composite sticks made the work easier. Wooden sticks needed sanding, shaving, heating and bending. Composites arrive with the lie, flex and curve already built in, so preparation is mostly cutting the end to length and taping it. Players still experiment, the Wild noted, but there’s a limit to how far a composite can be modified.

Length is the one thing almost everyone changes. In Carolina, Roy said, Sebastian Aho’s sticks come in at the exact height he wants, and he may still trim a little off. Andrei Svechnikov’s sticks now arrive taller so he can cut them down himself. Brent Burns has his sticks delivered at his requested height, cuts them down, and then adds a plug to bring them back up.

Tape is the player’s call

On tape itself, equipment staff mostly stay out of the way. Roy said tape and tape jobs come down to player preference and that there’s no single correct way to do it. The Wild reported that Mikko Koivu retaped his sticks between periods, and that another player taped a small black heart on his.

Some handle jobs are more construction than tape. Roy described defenceman Dylan Coghlan adding fibreglass to his handle and wrapping it in gauze and grip tape so it ends up round, “like a baseball bat,” rather than rectangular.

Where staff earn their keep is sourcing. When Dawson Mercer arrived in New Jersey, he brought extra rolls of the electrical tape he’d used on his handle since childhood in Newfoundland. The Devils’ equipment staff found the closest match they could, a 3M tape, so he could use it for the inner layers and save his own rolls for the top. Equipment staff have long been the keepers of a player’s odd requests. The Globe and Mail reported that Wayne Gretzky had the Oilers’ equipment manager carry a supply of baby powder for his tape.

Sometimes the advice flows the other way. Washington’s Ethen Frank melts surf wax onto his blade before games. He told The Hockey News in 2025 that the idea came from his equipment manager at Western Michigan, who said a former player used to melt the wax before applying it.

For the materials players choose from, see our tape types guide, and for individual players’ tape jobs, our player stories.

On the bench

During a game, sticks become a race. Sports Illustrated spent time with equipment managers in 2018 on what happens when a stick breaks. Washington’s head equipment manager, Brock Myles, estimated that the staffer stationed by the stick rack makes the handoff about nine times out of ten. Some teams arrange the spare sticks in numerical order, others by position, and players who break sticks often may get their backups placed near the front. Myles told SI he reviews the sticks during the anthem and recites the players by name.

The rules are strict. Players can’t keep playing with broken pieces, and a replacement can be handed over but not thrown. Players look for a stick that matches their hand, length and curve, and mistakes happen. Patrice Bergeron once took a wrong-handed stick and played with it.

The Devils described the same work from their side. A 2023 team feature on head equipment manager Chris Scoppetto and his staff described them getting a replacement over the boards to Nico Hischier during a counterattack against Buffalo, after his stick broke.

The hours behind it

None of this happens in a normal working day. The Devils’ feature said a road trip includes 23 hockey bags, 16 hard cases holding tape, tools, sewing kits, jerseys and laundry, two skate sharpeners, and more than 70 sticks. After a road game, staff pack everything before the players and coaches arrive, and a travel day can run to about 19 hours, with the room sometimes set up for the next day at 2 or 4 in the morning.

Pittsburgh’s Dana Heinze told the Post-Gazette in 2016 that he worked 90 to 100 hours a week during the season, first into the rink and last to leave. Ottawa’s Cox said the Senators travel with everything they might need so they never have to borrow from another team.

What you can borrow from the pros

Most of what NHL equipment rooms do scales down to a minor hockey bag:

• Keep a backup ready. Pros keep two used sticks behind each new one. A taped spare in the bag saves a game.
• Cut, then tape. Composite sticks come ready to play. Length is the main thing you’ll change. Measure twice and cut once.
• Learn your own tape job. If staff can recognize a player by the top two inches of the stick, you can settle on a knob and blade pattern that feels the same every time. Our forward, defence and goalie tutorials show you how.

A safety note from the stick room: when you cut a stick or trim tape, keep the blade of your saw or utility knife moving away from your body, and never tape over a crack. Retire the stick.