My Intersection with Sports and Technology

Hello, it’s me again (a human).  I chose Pro Stock equipment for a few reasons to write about since I could use both of my interests previously listed in this post.  The section above, written by ChatGPT, focused on the professional player.  I, a human, will write about the vast majority of players, kids and beer league players. The original intended market for pro stock equipment are typically professional and college players.  You will see equipment from the NHL, Minor League teams, Colleges and possible some others.  I have purchased equipment that were sourced to the NHL and colleges pending the information on the website and markings on the equipment. Now for my experience with pro stock equipment.

The first reason I started to look into and research pro stock equipment was cost.  Pro Stock equipment is generally less expensive than the retail counterpart.  I started looking into hockey sticks, which I am using as an example and the same benefits and downsides exist for the other pieces of equipment.  Sticks also happen to be the pieces of equipment that break or wear out the quickest.  With prices now going over $300 per stick on some sticks, it was harder to justify the cost specifically when you want to try out new stick curves.  Not sure about you, but I don’t want to throw away money if a specific curve doesn’t work with my son.  Pro Stock hockey sticks, or team sticks which is a sub type of pro stock equipment are generally $150 to $215 pending the brand and type.  While still expensive, the cost is much more palatable despite a couple downsides.  

One downside of using pro stock equipment is there is no manufacturer’s warranty and if any warranty exists from the website you used to purchase the equipment.  This means that it’s buyer beware where the equipment, in this case a stick, can break the first time one uses it on the ice without the ability to exchange it at a store.  The retail sticks can typically be exchanged if broken within the first 30 days after purchase as a one time only exchange and then you are on the hook if the replacement breaks.  Another downside is the actual number of sticks, and other equipment, that are available to purchase.  This availability is also dependent on the time of year as well.  Just think about it, the College and Professional players have to use the equipment and then at the end of the season will have their extra sticks make it into the pro stock inventory to purchase.  Therefore, you will need to be proactive to purchase once the sticks, which are limited in quantity, become available on the websites.  For example, I purchased 2 Sherwood’s Code TMP Pro hockey stick’s to store until the start of fall travel hockey season and found out a week afterwards that stock is now longer available.  

As mentioned in the last paragraph, I purchased the Sherwood Code TMP Pro hockey sticks.  My son recently changed to a P90TM curve using a CCM stick which was getting pretty beat up since he is a defensemen.  I do monitor the pro stock sites year round and found the Sherwood Code TMP Pro hockey sticks in the PP90TM curve (Sherwood’s code for the curve).  I purchased one for my son to tryout in order to see if the stick worked for him, which it did.  Knowing the limited inventory for pro stock equipment, I ordered two more sticks to hold until the season while my son plays with the original stick.  This also points out to another benefit for the taller players is that pro stock sticks can be found in longer versions over the retail sticks.  Retail sticks typically are 60 inches in length in my area, where as the sticks I purchased were 64 inches in length.   This means I did not have to purchase an extra extension and then glue it to the shorter retail stick.  An interesting information  piece about the original player who ordered the sticks that my son now uses is that the original player will  order sticks to try it out and then decide to not to use them which leads to the sticks availability to purchase.  I think this is the case with the Sherwood sticks I purchased by researching the player’s name on the sticks which I found was associated with a different curve than my son’s sticks that I found on another website and doing a google search.

It is also an interesting thought of where the equipment comes from as well.  I wrote about sticks so far in the post.  The associated teams for the sticks were from the Los Angeles Kings from the NHL, Michigan Tech (College/University), Quinnipiac University, and one university name that I can’t remember at the time of this post.  This also brings up one outlier from pro stock being less expensive which is any custom or little known equipment sizes.  Since my son is tall, I had to find elbow pads that were in the Large size in terms of circumference but longer.  After searching for a while I found a Large sized elbow pads but that contained an extra inch of padding which is atypical for the size.  The caveat here is that the source was from an international league, only one set was available anywhere so it was $100 dollars more due to the scarcity of the supply and where it came from, and it took a month to travel through international logistic companies as well.

I really enjoy researching the equipment and chasing it down which is another benefit of using pro stock, there is a sense of accomplishment to it.  To be successful, prior research knowledge of the form and function of equipment will also help you when purchasing pro stock equipment.

I have listed the three main sites that I have used to purchase equipment below.