Teen goalie designs pads to trick shots | Hacker News Reader

Teen goalie designs pads to trick shots

boston.com

96 pointsnickb41 comments

Smart idea. Since hockey is generally trying to increase scoring, I bet it gets banned.

it would be close to impossible to prove that it makes any difference whatsoever. and i'd imagine skill players would take offense at the idea that they look to see where the goalie's pads are.

I think that's pre-Bill James thinking about sports, especially the part about taking offense. If half the goalies in the NHL suddenly adopted this, it wouldn't take very long at all to measure statistical differences.

not good enough; you have to measure improvement.

but since no goalie is consistent enough for that to be possible to do, you'll never have proof.

The proper experimental design would show whether or not the pads make a difference.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

I agree, but there's no way to achieve the required rigor. How can you get a double-blind study when everyone can see the pads?

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

There are plenty of experimental designs other than double-blind that have been demonstrated to prove causality. Or actually "quasi-experimental" but still.

I had this book inflicted upon me in a past life: http://www.amazon.com/Experimental-Quasi-Experimental-Design...

I know we're just arguing on an internet forum, but in all seriousness, how can you possibly achieve control?

At this point I'm more interested in whether such a thing is even possible and less interested in being right on the internet =]

Double blind is setup so you can see low order effects. If your testing is 1 pound of cyanide is lethal it does not take a lot of scientific rigor to find out.

If the pads are 1% better it would be next to impossible to find out. But if they are 1/5 or 5 times as good it would be obvious.

Double-blind is needed when the prejudices of the experimenter and the subject may influence the outcome. In this case, it's safe to assume that the subjects care more about winning than they do about the study itself.

Further, what you're testing is their reaction to this new thing. It's inherently impossible to not let the subjects know if they're in the control or experimental group. Good experimental design is not synonymous with double-blind.

I don't think that's a very safe assumption at all. Lots of athletes do strange things for no good reason. See: Patrick Roy stepping over the blue lines compulsively throughout his entire career. I wonder if he still does it now that he's a coach.

I know I play differently if I think something's different with my equipment, even if I have little evidence to support that.

Those examples have nothing to do with wanting to, consciously or inadvertently, influence the outcome of the experiment. Double-blind only helps in that situation.

Nobody cares if the players want to influence the experiment. The point is to determine whether camouflage pads are more effective than regular pads, which isn't possible. There are simply way too many variables that you can't control.

As has been pointed out by others, with enough data, we can infer causality with reasonable confidence. It's not as good as being able to design the experiments ourselves, but it's all we have.

The alternative is to throw up our hands and declare that everything outside the lab is outside of science.

And as I keep pointing out, you'll never have the quantities of data required to make that kind of statement with any confidence.

For instance, why do the Leafs get halfway through the season and then start sucking? It's been the same story 15 years running now. You'd like to be able to point to one factor that was constant, but every element of the team and the league has changed at every level, from the coaching to the management to the players to the rules to the rink they play in.

The only thing that hasn't changed is the size of the puck, but nobody's claiming that that's why the Leafs can't win.

Moronic tangent over! I shouldn't post after midnight.

In this case, it's safe to assume that the subjects care more about winning than they do about the study itself.

What about the 500 lb deadlift barrier that was only broken when an athlete was tricked into thinking he was only lifting 499.5 lbs?

This is precisely my point, which is that the athlete's state of mind has much more to do with their performance than their equipment does (unless it's completely malfunctioned, of course).

Put 30 other athletes and coaches and so on in the mix and you have a total mess. Even if the markings made a positive difference it would likely be so small you couldn't distinguish it from the noise.

You don't need to know the weight of a barbell before stepping up to it. This is a circumstance where it's impossible to not hide from the subjects that something is different.

Unless you tell them that they're testing a new hockey-stick design. It's made from a nano-aluminium InnoStrength 2000 alloy, boys! If anyone asks about the odd-looking pad, tell them it's fitted with sensors.

Generally I aim for just inside the post...so I don't look at the goalie. The puck definitely does go where I look though - so it could make a bit of a difference.

What about pads with a fake goalpost on the outer edges?

I don't think that would be nearly as effective as the netting - the orientation of the pads would make it only be somewhat upright a small percentage of the time.

Do you aim there even if the goalie is hugging the post? What if you're in the slot and he's showing a huge 5-hole? Obviously, you're not going to try to hit the goalie, so that implies some awareness of the goalie's current location and a reaction to that information.

[Actually, I'm just trying to learn your shooting habits so I can inform my goalie brethren. What's your name, and where do you play? :-) ]

If the goalie is hugging one post, I am going for the opposite side. That is my patented wrap-around move since I am not as quick as I once was...the goalie always makes it to the same side so I come out a bit and go opposite top corner.

Huge 5-hole I think I look at where his pads are and then try to shoot in between...maybe that is why I am rarely successful there!

[I play in Toronto, and I have an unusually large amount of penalty minutes and not many goals because I play defense]

This reminded me of an 'experiment' with a morbidly obese goalie.

"The only way to fully test this theory was to get an NHL team to shoot against the faux fatso..."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119143109983647814.html

That's a great article. One of the counter-arguments

"Knowing we were going to play against him, we would take some extra practice and make sure we could hit those holes."

is fallacious, because it ignores the fact that the five guys on the other team are also going to practice to ensure that you can't hit those holes. I. e. there's going to be a defenseman on each side of him filling the (very small) gaps.

Fantastic read, my favorite part: "This led me to believe that real science was occurring, because it didn't seem like anyone was having fun."

As a goalie, I'm skeptical about claims that those pads will fool players. In fact, one school of thought says that pads should be dark so that the goalie appears as large and imposing as possible.

Regardless of their effectiveness, I think they look cool.

It only needs to confuse them for a split second once in a while to be a net gain (no pun intended).

Even if it's just misjuding where they begin and end, their motion, distance, etc. They're not going to be like an invisibility cloak, but any legal performance gain would be cool.

Neat concept, but I'm pretty impressed by how the design turned out. Credit should go to Stomp in this case, looks like they executed the concept quite well. Goalies are a special bunch -- I suppose spending more than half your time standing alone leaves you plenty of time to explore your artistic side (see the great masks out there) and think up ways to gain an edge on your opponent.

First time I've seen a blocker design for visual confusion, but some existing leg pad designs do incorporate this kind of visual trick to attempt to make the 5-hole look bigger.

Here's a long list of thumbnails of pads: http://www.hockeyworld.com/catHome.ihtml?catID=30&shop=0...

Note that while some just try to look cool, there is a common pattern of diagonal stripes from the inside of the knee to the outside of the foot - when you go down into a butterfly, the idea is that this makes it look like your knees are bent more than they are, and the five-hole is bigger than it is, because the insides of the foot and shin are white like the inside of the crease.

The Vaughan VPG 6* look the most like they're trying to fool the eye. Interestingly, others come close but ruin it by letting a dark pattern repeat right at the inside of the toe.

I thought that this was a Patrick Roy innovation, but couldn't remember where I read about it first.

Is this site crashing Firefox for anyone else?

I use firefox 3 and it is not crashing with this site

Anyone have pictures of the pads?

Anyone have pictures of the pads?

Besides the pic at the article, that is also here?: http://news.google.com/news?q=hockey+goalie+pads

Oh, I read the article on my BlackBerry so I didn't see the pic. Thanks for pointing this out.

Give this kid a job. He's more than a Hockey Player... He's an Entrepreneurial-athlete in the making.

Doesn't need a job, then. Will make his own.

Last time I was in Vegas watching a fight a hockey game broke out. Hate it when that happens.

I don't know why you are getting massively downvoted other than being a bit off topic.

Anyways, fighting is an important part of hockey. Hockey is a very physical sport, and fighting keeps things clean. Players enforce a whole set of rules themselves through fighting.

For example, even in a non-contact hockey league, you don't do anything stupid like cross-checking someone to the head because they will get their ass kicked.

I downvoted him because (a) it is a worn out cliche of a joke and (b) I played hockey for over 10 years and only got in a couple fights and did not see many more than that. The game is not about fighting. That isn't why it's played and it isn't why it should be watched. Only the ignorant seem to think otherwise.

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