The Hockey Stick Sham

"So what's with the unchecked aggression, here?" you ask. It is because, whenever I bought a stick with "Fabrique au Canada" on it, I assumed some Canadian was making a decent wage because of it. I would spend $20 on a piece of lumber and fiberglass but never lose any sleep over buying it.

Not so anymore. Anymore, I get the sense I'm paying a buttload of money to an increasingly consolidated group of CEOs and investors. Get a load of this:

Around twelve years ago, the shoe giant, Nike, bought out the hockey pad company, Bauer, and dispensed with the hockey brand, Cooper (Nike has recently sold Bauer for about half what they paid for it. For more, go here.) I remember my adolescent teammates and I drooled over Nike equipment for a few months, until sweat and mould replaced the sexiness of our new pads. In our needy little minds, though, it had to be Nike.

In 2004, another shoe giant, Reebok, purchased hockey brands CCM (Canadian Cycle and Motor), Jofa, and Koho. Since they have taken over, it seems these companies can't go a year without overhauling their skate, pad and stick designs. Granted, there have been some new technologies, but certainly not enough to justify such efforts. More likely, all that redesigning is simply a ploy to sell more products.

So what justifies such high prices? One might argue that the cost of the graphite and Kevlar for these one-piece sticks drives up the cost of making them. I suppose it is true that graphite and Kevlar are more costly than ash and fiberglass. However, some graphite sticks go for as low as $60. Moreover, I am reminded that pencils use graphite, not lead. And pencils are some of the cheapest items around.

Or perhaps it is the Kevlar that makes these sticks expensive. I have no clue how much it costs to make Kevlar. When my hockey stick will have to block bullets, I can only guess, but Kevlar regularly fails to keep the stick together when it comes to shooting a puck.  

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