What to check on last season’s hockey stick before the first skate

Three things, and only one of them is the stick. Pull the old tape off and put fresh on. Check that the player still fits the stick, because people grow over a summer and sticks don’t. Then look the shaft over once, in good light. Most of the time you’ll find nothing wrong, and that is a real answer, not a cop out.

The tape is the part that actually aged

A roll of tape has a worse summer than a carbon shaft does. The wax is gone, the adhesive has either gone hard or gone gummy, and whatever was on the blade in March has been holding grit from the bottom of the bag ever since.

So start there, and don’t negotiate with yourself about it. Strip the blade wrap and the knob, both of them, and start over. Tape costs a few dollars and takes ten minutes. It is also the only job on this page you will feel the second you pick the stick up, because your hands know the knob better than your eyes know the shaft.

Look it over once, and do it now

The blade is bare and the stick is already in your hands, so this is the cheapest look you will get all year. Take it under a real light and go over the whole thing, butt end to toe.

We are not going to run the checklist again here, because it already has a page of its own. Signs a hockey stick is about to break covers what to listen for, what to look for, and where damage collects. Do it at the kitchen table. Doing it in a parking lot twenty minutes before a skate is how people talk themselves out of what they just found.

Check the player, not just the stick

This is the check almost nobody runs, and it is the one most likely to come back with something.

A stick that fit in March fits a person who does not exist anymore, if that person was eleven. Height moves, weight moves, and the stick is exactly as long as it was the day it arrived. Stand it up next to whoever is going to use it and compare that against where it sat last year. If it has moved, the size question is open again, and the stick is not the thing that changed.

Ours come in three sizes, and the numbers are fixed per size. Senior is 77 flex, 385 g, about 65 inches (165 cm). Intermediate is 50 flex, 320 g, about 62 inches (157 cm). Junior is 20 flex, 260 g, about 58 inches (147 cm). To settle it in ten seconds instead of arguing about it, put height and weight into the size finder. For the longer version, how to choose a hockey stick has the reasoning, and hockey stick length takes the measuring on its own.

What a summer in the garage did, and what we won’t claim about it

Here is the honest version. We do not know what a summer in a hot garage does to a Maila shaft, because nobody has put one through that and measured the other side. So we are not going to tell you that heat warped it, that damp got into it, or that cold made it brittle. Those sentences turn up in every article on this subject and not one of them comes with a number attached.

What we will say is that a stick stored badly usually got hit rather than cooked. Leaned in a corner and knocked over, or buried under a bag of gear all summer. Those are impacts, and impacts leave something to find, which is what the look in the previous section is for.

There is no number of seasons

People want to hear “replace it every two years” and we are not going to say it. We have not measured a lifespan for our sticks, so we will not publish a seasons figure, and you should want to know how anybody else got theirs before you spend money on it.

Condition, not the calendar. A stick that saw two easy skates a week and no blocked shots can be in better shape after two years than one that saw four months of hard hockey. Judge the one in your hands.

Most of the time, the stick is fine

This is the outcome nobody writes a post about, so we will write it. You strip the tape, you look the shaft over, you stand it next to the player, and it all comes back clean. Then you re-tape it and go skate on it.

A pre-season check is not a hunt for a reason to buy something. It is twenty minutes that either finds a problem while there is still time to solve it, or tells you that you don’t have one. Both of those are worth twenty minutes. Only one of them costs money.

If it isn’t fine, this is the week to find out

Timing is the whole reason to do this in late September rather than the night before. Our sticks ship from Finland and take about one to two weeks to reach you, tracked the whole way. Shipping to the US is free and duties and taxes are included, so the price on the page is the price you pay. Senior is $214.99, Intermediate is $166.99, Junior is $142.99, and every color in a size costs the same.

A stick ordered this week arrives with room to spare. A stick ordered the night you find the crack does not. Returns are open for 30 days if it goes unused, and if one breaks in normal play inside the first 30 days we replace it once. Questions go to hello@supermaila.com.

Common questions

Should you re-tape a hockey stick before the season starts? Yes, and it is the easiest thing on the list. Old tape has lost its wax, the adhesive has changed, and the knob has been packed flat in a bag since spring. Strip both and start fresh.

Does a hockey stick go bad sitting in a garage over the summer? We have not measured what storage does to a carbon shaft, so we will not tell you heat or damp ruined it. Look for impact damage instead, because a stick in storage is a stick that other things get leaned on and dropped on.

How do you know if last season’s stick still fits? Stand it next to the player and compare that against where it sat a year ago. Our three sizes run about 65, 62 and 58 inches, so a player who has moved between two of them has a real question to answer.

If the answer is a new one

Then you get to pick a color, which is the good part. Every Maila stick is 100% carbon fiber, designed and tested in Finland, with one flex and one build per size. That leaves you three decisions: the size, which hand goes low, and what it looks like. Each one ships in a velvet bag with a regulation puck. The sticks are here, and not one of them is black.