Quote:
Originally Posted by Jarick
Thanks! I mostly meant when you're trying to he-man the stick and bend it in half. Obviously you gotta put some pressure into the stick. I really want to try and make some videos this winter to illustrate some of the crap in my head!
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Yeah, it's pretty subjective for sure, there's obviously a sweet spot between not enough downward pressure and too much downward pressure, you certainly have to make sure you've still got some good forward velocity and aren't just bending the stick instead of actually shooting. I just feel that most people with weak shots err too much on the side of not enough pressure, too much sweeping at the puck with their arms, and not really getting their whole weight into the shot. I mean, look at how much flex Kessel gets out of his stick on a snap shot before even making contact with the puck:
He's definitely putting a tonne of pressure on his bottom hand to be generating that much flex (as well as using a whippy stick, and doing a great job with that push/pull motion that you described), and he's got one of the best shots in the world. I think you can see it in this Cammalleri video too, he just really gets a tonne of weight/pressure down into the shaft (slow mo at the 1:00 mark):
Interesting side note that I just picked out looking at these two videos, it looks like Kessel is using a mid kick (shaft stays pretty straight down by the blade, really flexes on both sides of his bottom hand), while Cammalleri seems to be using more of a low kick (shaft flexes quite a lot down by the blade, less flex by his lower hand). Not really significant to this discussion, but I just noticed this and thought it was kind of cool how you can see the different flex profiles.