I use A LOT of different goalie blockers, and I have found a lot of companies have moved towards using more durable Jenpro (think fake leather) material on the bindings on the thumb and fingers of the blocker in order to increase durability of their equipment. This was never a problem with wooden and foam core sticks, since those sticks had a gloss overcoat without the added Griptac feeling of modern composite hockey sticks.

Previously, I have used sandpaper and hand sanded the grip on my goalie sticks in order to allow easier poke checks and to have more freedom of movement on my lower hand. Some blockers don’t add the Jenpro binding and I have no issues with grippy sticks, Brian’s and True immediately come to mind. But most have added wear patches which, in my experience, greatly interfere with poke checking abilities. I wanted to find a solution that used less elbow grease and didn’t have the opportunity to sand away the carbon fibre of the stick itself.

In comes gloss clear coat spray paint (or some other gloss finish). I searched online A LOT before making a purchase… there were so many different suggestions and and statements of “You have to use this specific type” of which often contradicted each other… so I ended up just buying what was the cheapest and fastest thing I could find online.

Watch the full video below so you can see the results and see how much easier it is to poke check with the gloss clear coat.

While this ended up working perfectly for my goalie sticks I have tried so far a few learning experiences I want to pass on…

1. It might take off or smudge the graphics of your stick and ruin your paint, it did that on the player stick I tested it on.
2. Follow the instructions and know you will have to use multiple coats of spray, my attempts of spraying A LOT at once didn’t end up giving me the ultimate gloss finish I was hoping for. I didn’t expect a perfectly smooth surface, but I needed to add layers after it dried!
3. If you are going to let the stick hang off the ground, ensure the paint can drip away from where you hold the stick, standing it up is fine or have it so the bottom edge of the stick is pointing down since your fingers shouldn’t overlap that part of the paddle anyways.

It is annoying that I couldn’t order my custom Bauer MyBauer Shadow goalie stick without a grip finish… so having to take spray paint to a brand new stick is quite annoying. But I am extremely happy with the results!

If this video and article helped you better poke checks or by just removing the grippy stick feeling, it would be greatly appreciated if you helped support this channel by buying hockey equipment through these links (I get a kick back in sales) if you are in the US at Pure Hockey  or if you are in Canada through Hockey Supremacy

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