Stick manufacturing: the return of “made here” hockey becomes possible again

The return to Quebec of hockey stick production, currently concentrated in Asia, would be within reach. And it is in the laboratories of Polytechnique Montréal, built on the slopes of Mount Royal, that this revenge on history becomes reality. And faster than you think.

• Also read: $500 hockey that makes you angry

• Also read: I tested the $500 stick and it didn’t change anything

• Also read: “No name” sticks for better prices: Force Hockey’s bet

“The only thing currently preventing the repatriation of large-scale hockey production is labor costs,” summarizes Louis Laberge Lebel, professor of mechanical engineering at Polytechnique Montréal, affiliated with the University of Montreal.

“These costs are obviously more significant here than in Asia,” he continues. But contrary to popular belief, they are not essential. At least, less and less!”

Secret processes

Assisted by a team of student-researchers, the latter has been looking for more than ten years for a way to circumvent this economic constraint which has led companies like CCM, Bauer and Canadian Tire, owner of Sher-Wood (of Sherbrooke), since 2011, to transfer their stick production to China and other Asian countries over the years.

In addition, Professor Laberge Lebel’s team has developed a method for manufacturing hockey sticks from composite materials, using two techniques: those of braiding and the pultrusion of carbon microfibers and thermoplastic polymer.

The combination of these two techniques would result in hockey sticks with “excellent impact resistance”, in addition to having the rare characteristics, unlike the sticks currently produced, of being both repairable (when broken), recyclable and even “reformable” (to give them a new appearance).

Robotization

But there is more. The real genius behind the ultra-secret process developed by the Polytechnique Montréal team consists of being able to easily integrate into an automated production line intended for mass manufacturing of sticks, 24 hours a day, without requiring manual operations.

This is the automation of hockey manufacturing (therefore without any real need for labor), the real keystone of a possible return of hockey production to American, Canadian, or even Quebec soil. , supports the professor of mechanical engineering.

And even if we’re not there yet, we feel, from his tone of voice, that we’re seriously getting there. With the laboratory research completed, the team is now concentrating on the prototyping stages.

Industrial partnership

Moving from the laboratory to its robotic application in the factory currently constitutes the next challenge that could attract the interest of one of the major players in the hockey equipment industry.

CMM, Bauer, and others, in Europe or Asia perhaps, are in the running. Of these, no one has yet positioned itself as an official industrial partner of the work and advances developed over the past ten years at Polytechnique.

But we feel that all this could change. And sooner rather than later.

Highlight

It was in 2007 that the production of wooden sticks ceased definitively at the Sher-Wood factory in Sherbrooke, in Estrie. It was judged at the time that they were no longer a match for composite poles.