

When a hockey player uses a slap shot, the puck really zooms over the ice. Bobby Hull of the Chicago Black Hawks had a slashing slap shot. Once some measuring devices timed his shot at 110 miles an hour. Goalies insisted it was faster than that.
For a while part of Hull’s fire power was due to his curved hockey stick. Many other players used a curved stick similar to Hull’s. The shape came about by accident.
During the 1960-1961 season Hull’s teammate Stan Mikita noticed that his shots and passes acted strangely. The puck seemed to rise, dip, sail, or curve in an arc. Mikita checked his stick and saw that it was cracked and bent. When other teammates tried using that stick, they got the same results.
Several players began to experiment. Mikita didn’t know how his stick had gotten into that condition, so it was decided to imitate the shape of Mikita’s stick by shoving others under a door, bending them, and leaving them that way overnight.
Because of the way it was curved and bent, the new type of stick came to be known as a banana blade. Hull and Mikita were outstanding shooters before the banana blade, but with the bent stick they combined to win the scoring championship six times. In 1968-1969 Hull scored 58 goals, which was then the record for a single season.
Goalies began to complain about the use of these outlandish sticks. They were downright dangerous. As goalie Ed Giacomin remarked, “It’s hard enough to stop the straight shots, let alone some of the crazy ones. You never know what to expect.”
Some of the forwards using the sticks weren’t too happy either. They couldn’t control the puck on breakaways, and their passes were often off target. Besides, because of the shape of the stick, it was almost impossible to try a backhand shot. The puck might end up anywhere at all.
Hockey officials realized that the banana blade was not good for the game. The offense had too much of an edge over the defense. The amount of curve in the blade was reduced drastically.
Today the curve or “bow” of a stick is under very close scrutiny by officials. If a player is caught using even a fraction too much, the result is an automatic two-minute minor penalty. Besides, today’s hockey players don’t need such an advantage. Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers scored 212 points in the 1981-1982 season, and he didn’t need a banana blade to do it.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
Turns out the first banana blade was developed in 1927, Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators. But nobody liked it so it was forgotten until Mikita’s accident with his stick.
I liked using the banana blade when playing road hockey. I could make the ball sing (well in my imagination… in reality off key… because I wasn’t a good hockey player.) It was a sad day when my favorite road hockey stick blade broke.