Pad color, skate odor and too much tape | Equipment stories from the Sabres’ locker room

NHL players seek every advantage – tangible or psychological – they can find with their equipment, and the Buffalo Sabres have plenty of that in their locker room. Over the last couple months, Sabres.com has asked around to get the inside scoop.

Sabres legend and Hockey Hall of Fame goaltender Dominik Hasek was at KeyBank Center for Buffalo’s Jan. 29 win over the Los Angeles Kings.

Alex Lyon, wearing the goathead alternate uniforms from his idol Hasek’s playing days, set a franchise record that night with his 10th consecutive win in net. Postgame in the locker room, Hasek congratulated the 33-year-old on the feat but also had a burning question:

Black pads?

It turns out Lyon agrees, but for different reasons.

“I hate black gear. I’ve never worn black gear in my life,” Lyon said of an aesthetic choice he now regrets. “I’ve been all white for five, six years now, and I think it’s a massive advantage as a goalie when you wear all white. I do. I have a lot of opinions on goalie gear. Some people just make a cool design and go, and I’m not like that.

“I just think black pads present worse. [Hasek] said you could lose the puck in the pads; it can go both ways. I just find I look smaller in black, and it bothers me.”

The journeyman, playing for his fifth team in nine seasons, knows the equipment staff are his “lifeblood” as a goalie and worries that a midseason pad replacement would just pile onto their workloads. With Lyon under contract through next season, white-and-red alternate pads will have to wait until the summer.

“Thank god I’ve been reasonably successful in them, otherwise I probably would have switched,” he continued. “It was just a moment of weakness, and next year, I’ll definitely not get the black gear.”

"Alex, he’s being kind to the team. He could easily ask for a different set of black gear for that uniform," reacted head equipment manager Dave Williams, adding that TRUE brand, which Lyon switched to from Vaughn last summer, has a roughly three-week turnaround for pad orders.

While light-colored pads change how the 6-foot-1 Lyon feels, the way he wears them actually improves his coverage of the net. Explaining his setup, Lyon pointed to the laces connecting his skate holder to the bottom of his leg pad – they're unusually loose, he demonstrated.

“So, whenever I go down, basically my pad sits off my skate this much (points to gap), and I gain like six inches of width from my butterfly,” he continued. “You have to have other crazy attributes in order to survive as a small goalie. It’s just math: the bigger you are, the more space you take up.”

Lyon’s approach is in stark contrast to that of tandem-mate Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, one of the NHL’s tallest goalies at 6-foot-5. Luukkonen cinches his leg pads super tight and with leather straps, not the more typical, modern Velcro. He had the straps removed near the knees, keeping things nice and loose up top while secure down low.

“Upie is, like, living in 1975 with his gear, which is crazy,” Lyon said.

“What the [expletive] does that even mean?,” responded a smiling Luukkonen. “All my strappings are on my calf. It just keeps it tight, so it doesn’t over-rotate or anything. But I still get good rotation of my ankle, and I have room for my knee to move around. It’s just the easiest way to move.

“I want to feel as fast as I can, and having the gear that’s not wobbling around, that’s really close to my feet, it gives you that feeling that everything is more in control. But every goalie’s different.”

Luukkonen has also raised eyebrows in the room for other reasons. Ryan McLeod, asked in January about the weirdest equipment habit he’s seen this season, was quick to respond.

“Upie had his pants in the shower today,” McLeod said.

“When I get new gear,” explained Luukkonen, “I put it in the sauna, just to heat it up and break it in a little bit.”

If it works, it works. Lyon’s and Luukkonen’s clashing habits, plus a bit of Colten Ellis, have combined for the NHL’s best goaltending since early December.

‘Keep it fresh and clean’

When Jason Zucker wore the mic during a February practice, he got to talking about his gear – specifically, his preference for the new and fresh. The winger replaces his stick every game, his gloves every five games, his skates every month.

Compare that to Josh Norris, Zucker’s audience on the bench that day, who uses just one pair of gloves a season.

“I just like the feel of new gloves,” Zucker later explained. “Once they get too broken down, they get too loose on my hands. I like when they feel a little bit tighter. I feel like I just have a better feel of my stick that way.”

Added Beck Malenstyn: “I know some guys like things broken in and old, and [Zucker’s] definitely more of the ‘keep it fresh and clean.’”

Zucker’s mom, Natalie, shared during the mom’s trip in February that Jason has always refused to wear wet, sweaty equipment. Of course, she was the one drying his skates and hanging his clothes over the car between games at youth tournaments. But the middle of five siblings doesn’t attribute this to his upbringing.

“Five kids, and all five playing hockey. It was just hockey gear all over the place. It was nuts,” Zucker said. “But every kid’s different. My oldest brother, I don’t think he unzipped his bag one time his whole life. It just absolutely reeked, it was just terrible. Never had new gloves, never had new gear at all. For me, I was always a little bit more particular with my stuff.

“… That’s still real. I think it’s just part of my personality. Now, we get treated so well, everything’s dry all the time, and you don’t really have to worry about it, so it’s all good.”

Once Zucker retires his gear, it’s in the hands of the equipment staff: Williams, George Babcock, Ben Laing and Keith Hayes. Much of it becomes available for purchase in the team store.

Assistant equipment manager George Babcock has his hands full with Zucker, on and off the ice.

• From last season: Overnight with the Sabres’ equipment staff

Those guys accommodate every player’s habits (and superstitions) before it’s time to hit the ice, and their jobs are similar parts restocking the new gear and maintaining the old stuff. For each player under contract, Williams shared, they start the season with at least six pairs of gloves and two pairs of skates. A guy like Zucker requires frequent orders; others, not so much.

“I used to be in and out of skates pretty quickly, but there was problems I didn’t like, and the new ones haven’t been doing it,” said McLeod, looking at his skates hanging above his locker. “Yeah, they’re pretty banged up.”

They clearly work for one of the league’s fastest skaters. But with 82 games a season, plus several dozen practices and morning skates, doesn’t odor become an issue with those old boots?

“That’s for the equipment guys,” McLeod laughed. “I’ve just got to show up and put them on.”

"His equipment, it’s on the high scale of stench," Williams confirmed. "At this level, most players just ask for new stuff that doesn’t get to that level of smell that we’re getting out of McLeod right now."

Continued Zucker: “You don’t want to be egregious and do anything outrageous. But what you feel is gonna help you play the best and ultimately help you win games is what you’ve got to do.”

‘I learned the tape budget earlier this year’

McLeod’s name came up again as Sabres.com made its rounds in the locker room.

“Clouder tapes his ankles literally 30 times with clear tape,” Norris volunteered. “I do none. I just put [the sock] over the tongue and out I go. I like my ankles loose so they can bend. … He literally uses like half a roll of clear tape to tape his ankles.”

“Clouder does use an obscene amount of sock tape,” agreed Malenstyn.

“I’ve seen stuff he’s doing that I’ve never seen anyone do before, as far as taping his ankles like that,” added Zucker, a veteran of 15 seasons and five NHL teams. “How many times he does it, the times he does it on the bench and in the room.”

"The reason he uses so much tape," Williams explained, "is because his skates are four years old. He refuses to get new equipment, so he’s holding it together with a lot of tape. He likes a real tight ankle area, so that’s one way of doing it. It puts a lot of stress on the tendon guard, so sometimes we have to fix that."

Taping habits vary across the team. Many guys, like Norris, wrap their outer socks over their skates. Some, like Malenstyn, Josh Doan and Logan Stanley, cover the tongue but not the heel. Alex Tuch adds an outer strip of tape at the ankles; Carrick does that, plus a diagonal strip up to his calf tape. Collectively, the Sabres go through a whole lot of tape over the course of a season.

“I learned the tape budget earlier this year,” Lyon said. “I heard it was like $110,000.”

"No, that's not true," Williams corrected.

“Honestly,” Zucker said, “I would’ve thought it would be more, just because of how much we go through all the time.”

And that doesn’t even get to what’s hidden under those blue-and-gold striped uniform socks.

“Benny and [Jiri Kulich] both wear some pretty interesting socks under their gear,” Malenstyn said. “I mean, Benny’s wearing Father’s Day socks. Where he has those from, I’m really not sure.”

“I don’t know about Father’s Day,” Zach Benson reacted. “I’ve got Christmas socks. It’s just something I started doing this summer. I ran out of socks and I like the feel of them.”