Stan Mikita and Bobby Hull revolutionized the game of hockey. Back in the day, hockey sticks blades were straight. One day with about 20 minutes left for practice, the blade on Mikita’s stick broke, he didn’t want to have to go down stairs to the locker to get another stick so he got some duc tape and taped it up. When he taped it up the blade was curved. He was skating all over the ice with the puck and nobody could take it from him. Mikita noticed he could control the puck much easier with the curve in the stick.
Then after practice he tried to break the stick with slap shots. Bobby Hull was watching him from the bench and noticed the puck was raising up to the top of the net. Before the curved stick most slap shots only traveled about knee high. And the two of then talked after practice about bending a stick.
At first they broke a few sticks and then Mikita remembered to bend wood, you need to soak it in water for a few hours. So they stayed late and soaked a stick in water for a while and stuck the blade under a door and held it up with a chair. The next day the blade on the stick was curved. But Bobby Hull was a lefty so he did the same thing the next night for a lefty. Now Bobby Hull at the time had the hardest slap shot in the NHL. Goalies who didn’t wear mask back then were seeing pucks shot at them at 100 MPH’s coming right for their head from the blue line. How terrifying would that be? Although Bobby Hull had a huge banana curve and his shots would fly upward. So the NHL put a restriction on the curve...you can only have a one inch curve on the blade of your stick. And the game has never been the same since....
Excellent story. Thank you.
That is a great story! Lots of inventions happen just by chance. But it takes a cleaver person to pick up on it.