Protective Gears in Hockey

Hockey players have often been perceived as wearing medieval armor-like protective gears from head to toe. However, that has not always been the case. While, indeed, hockey is a very dangerous sport, with all the contact and puck flying around, but in the early days of hockey, due to the limitations in materials and lack of awareness, hockey players weren’t very well protected. In the early days of hockey, players usually only wore shin guards and gloves as real protective equipment. However, as technology progressed and more and more players got injured, the usage of protective gear started to become more and more common which we will be covering today.

Helmets

Can you imagine playing full-contact hockey without wearing a helmet? Hockey helmets were only mandated in the NHL merely 40 years ago, when a player, Bill Masterton, died from brain injuries in a hockey game in 1968. However, it took the NHL a decade after the incident to announce that protective helmets are mandatory. The hockey helmet at the time was made of hard plastic, with foam inside for shock absorption. Nowadays, with the introduction of next-generation shock absorbing materials, such as the CCM’s D30, hockey helmets are becoming more and more safe which is evident through the decline in severe head injuries in hockey in recent years. 

From the lens of physics, head injuries occur from the player’s brain experiencing too great of impact force due to impulse (change in momentum), which has the physical formula of “force * time”. As the time of collision extends, the average impact force reduces as the impulse (change in momentum) is constant. Thus, by using materials which can maximize the time of collision, the player will experience less impact force. 

Paddings

Similar to helmets, protective paddings were not very welcome amongst early days hockey players, as they were seen as extra weight and not “sty”. However, as more and more players started to get life-long injuries from getting slammed into the boards, getting hit by pucks, and falling on the ice, paddings began to become more commonly seen around the 1920s. Unlike now, paddings at the time were mostly made of leather, and they usually do not cover the full body. After the WW2, when plastic and synthetic materials became more and more popular, hockey players started adopting some of the materials for protective paddings. Nowadays, protective gears are usually made of hard plastic or other synthetic materials with foam underneath. 

Similar to helmets, paddings are also designed to lengthen the time of impact to reduce the force of collision. However, paddings also have to take mobility and comfort into consideration as hockey is a very fast-moving sport. So, designers usually reduce the volume and weight of pads around joints or use multiple pieces of pads to improve the player’s range of motion.