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Redlight

Dissecting the pad

By Redlight, in Goal Equipment

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Redlight    0

Redlight
Posted

Coming back after so many years, Ive simply lost the vocabulary of pad design.

I'd like to learn to identify the components of hybrid/butterfly pads. Does anyone have a good online resource that breaks it down?

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Redlight

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Redlight    0

Redlight
Posted

That thread is excellent. I'm learning that Law Goalie is like the wise man on top of the mountain :)

What I'm looking for though is more of a pad component breakdown. Knee blocks, risers, etc.

I see threads all over the internet from goalies who are modifiying/customizing pads for fit a and function and I can't tell what is what.

Just a diagram with components identified would be terrific.

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Redlight

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Law Goalie    147

Law Goalie
Posted

Yeah, and like most hermits, I disappear for long periods, only to emerge in full rant.

It's funny you mention that: the MacDonald brothers (a pair of superb hockey and goalie coaches from NJ) and I had, at one point, kicked around the idea of a flash-based diagram.

There is a 'goalie dictionary' from the old goalieboard.com forums that someone mirrored on new hosting, but it's merely OK.

In terms of general vocabulary...

The main body of a pad is 'broken down' into four main sections along the face: boot, shin, knee, and thigh. The thigh is also sometimes called the 'thigh-rise', although confusingly, this is also sometimes used to refer to some arbitrary, cryptic 'plus size' that has been 'added' to the thigh. Basically, it's a meaningless distinction now, given Kay Whitmore's NHL Rule 11.2 LDS formula (Limiting Distance Size): "The Limiting Distance Size will be the sum of the floor to knee and 55% of the knee to pelvis measurements plus a four inch (4”) allowance for the height of the skate."

These four sections are connected by three 'breaks' in the pad: at the ankle (often called the 'boot break'), and above and below the knee. These are generally referred to as 'internal breaks'. These breaks can be built to function like hinges (as on the original Pete Smith Velocity design for Vaughn), or they can be more or less solid angular joints (as on the original Michel Lefebvre RBK design) with little to no flexibility, but which give the pad a contour that more or less follows the leg; see the short-lived 'Flatpads' for a design that was almost a straight plank. However, some people will refer to a pad with inflexible joints as having 'no breaks', even though this is not strictly speaking true; they just mean that the breaks are non-functional.

On the face of the pad, you'll also find the 'vertical roll' running up the lateral (outside) edge. Generally, the vertical roll will 'express' or 'carry through' the breaks in the pad, though sometimes a non-broken vertical roll will be used to add a little stiffness to a pad with very flexible internal breaks. Breaks in the vertical roll are almost universally called 'external breaks.'

From here, we can get a little more general.

Anything called a 'wing' (calf or knee) is something attached to the medial (inside edge of the pad) at a certain 1/2" offset (see NHL 11.2); a wing will be in contact with the ice just behind the medial edge of the pad itself when in the butterfly. Anything called a 'riser', a 'lift', a 'stack', or a 'block' (or similar terms) is simply some packaged layering of foam that supports the knee on top of the wing when in the butterfly.

The 'knee lock' or 'knee cradle' is the innermost layer of padding for the knee, generally attaching behind the knee with an elastic velcro strap. Some of these are one-piece cradles, as on Lefebvre's Kohos and their Reebok inheritors; some are two or even three-piece designs, with individual pieces sewn or laced into the back of the pad between the upper and lower knee breaks. While almost allr etail apds come with knee-locks, no everyone employs the straps or even keeps the knee-lock in place: many pros prefer to remove them entirely to accommodate larger knee-pads (individual pieces that strap directly to the leg and slide up under the pants).

A 'calf wrap' or 'leg channel' generally refers to the innermost layers of padding on the rear face of the pad, sitting closest to the leg. Some people refer to the pad's stays (the 3mm nylon cord used to lace the pad's shell to the foam core) as the leg channel, but this is simply inaccurate. There can also be velcro elastic 'calf lock' straps, which hold the calf padding closer to the leg.

Generally, an 'open' leg channel is is wider, leaving room for the leg to move around behind the pad; a 'closed' leg channel will wrap more closely to the leg, yielding a more responsive pad. That said, the way that one straps the calf padding plays a significant role in determining how the knee and calf feel and play.

Straps are straps: pretty self-explanatory.

Lower down the pad, the 'boot channel' is not well defined in NHL 11.2, but is generally taken to be at least a 1/2" deep recessing of the middle portion of the underside of the boot. The 'toe ties' or 'toe strings' are 3mm nylon cords or skate laces (or sometimes elastics) that the goalie laces around the skate boot, and which connect to a point on the toe of the pad called the 'toe bridge.' The toe bridge may be simply two holes punched in the toe of the pad and reinforced with a small tab of strap leather (as on many Brian's pads), or or may be a flap of heavy leather bolted onto the toe of the pad (as on Koho/Reebok), or it may be a 'sliding toe bridge' (invented by Pete Smith) in which the toe ties loop through a plastic disc (or discs) and a slotted plastic tab that allows the laces and disc ('slider') to slide back and forth as the foot rotates behind the pad in butterfly transitions and movements.

That should do as a primer. If you want to get into actual dissections of pads, I do have photos, but that's a bit more of an odyssey...

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Law Goalie    147

Law Goalie
Posted

Nice illustration!

#4 "Toe" should be "boot." The toe is the extreme tip of the boot.

You could label the toe bridge: it's the little bit peeking out from under the pad on the left (forward facing).

You might want to pluralise #5 to "Breaks" -- though that's a nitpick.

It would be worth calling #7 "Knee Stack, aka..." just to be clear; prefacing that with 'knee' is common parlance, though a touch redundant, I'll admit.

The pads you've chosen for the illustration do a good job of showing some confusions about the leg channel and calf wrap. On some pads, these are integral pieces, with the straps simply wrapping the padding around the calf; on the ones you picked, the calf wrap is the pieces that's floating on the two calf straps, and the leg channel is the corresponding set of interlocking padding sewn into the rear face of the pad.

It would also help to label the medial (inside) and lateral (outside) gussets of the pad, since those are the most clearly defined relative orientations in dealing with pads, though most people still use confusing terms like inside and outside, which could refer to three or four different aspects of the pad; medial and lateral are actual terms in human anatomy, as in the MCL ligament.

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Law Goalie    147

Law Goalie
Posted

Looking good!

And on further review...

#6 should be "Wings (Knee and Calf)" -- might as well be plural and specific, if you've got the space for it.

Confusion re: #9 could still be addressed, I think, be labeling part attached to the pad's read face as the 'leg channel', and the floating piece currently labeled as #9 as 'calf wrap'; effectively, split the one into two, since that's how it is on the pad pictured.

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