New Product Removes the Sticky Situation of Non-Recyclable Plastic Tape

The Sock Trap is a new product entering into the hockey equipment market and has a strong environmental base to build on. This is seen to be the solution to the problems surrounding the non-recyclable plastic taping used to hold up hockey socks at every practice and game.

A player must go through an immense amount of tape throughout there hockey career, the stuff litters locker rooms in arenas, if and when it is cleared up, it ends up in landfill sites and has no chance of degrading. This is the angle taken by Sock Trap's inventor Henry Verbakel, as well as showing the time and financial savings associated with purchasing this product.

"Sock Trap is a one-inch wide enclosed loop consisting of a section of Velcro® attached to a section of elastic band material. When the Velcro® portion on the Sock Trap contacts your sock it attaches and remains in place until you choose to remove it. When you put on or remove your shin guard and sock at the beginning or end of a game, the Sock Trap will remain attached to your sock ready to provide the tension needed to keep them in place." - from www.socktrap.com

This is the type of product that does well in sports markets, although a simple idea, it offers players an easy way to save time and money. Along with the feel good knowledge that they are doing their bit to help remove an environmental issue.

Sock Trap can be purchased from www.socktrap.com prices starting at $12.95 for a single set.

Taking the Fight Outside

On the 9th February, the NHL officially announced one of the worst kept secrets this season. The 2013 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic will be fought out between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs, and will be one for the record books, as it is held in Michigan Stadium.

The Winter Classic has quickly become the centrepiece event in the NHL regular season, ever since Buffalo and Pittsburgh stepped out into Ralph Wilson Stadium on New Years Day 2008. The continual success of this event year on year, has cemented this in as an annual event.

Best Foot Forward for Cammalleri and Adidas

Adidas are unveiling the new Adipure trainer, utilising the services of Michael Cammalleri, in 30 second TV/Digtial advertising spots this month across Canada. The first notice of this partnership into the public domain, was through Cammalleri’s twitter account at the start of this month.

Cammalleri is known for being one of the hardest working players in the gym, both during, and out of the season. This image is already being used in an endorsement deal that he has with BioSteel, and was featured in the NHL’s “Questions Will Become Answers” campaign that ran before the 2010-11 NHL season.

Bauer RE-AKT to Hockey's Concussion Worries

Late last month Bauer added to their long line of safety equipment with the RE-AKT helmet, featuring "the SUSPEND-TECH liner, a unique patent-pending rotational impact protection system to protect the head from excessive rotational acceleration when the helmet is impacted", a new system to enhance the safety of players out on the ice.

Ever since it was announced that Sidney Crosby was out for an indefinite period, concussions have become the hot topic. From that moment, we have seen a long list of top players ruled out for various lengths of time because of this injury. So many in fact, that there are "all star concussion teams" joked about in the media and on the internet.

For players and parents out there, this just adds to the worries about playing a contact sport. For any manufacturer, this brings about a large opportunity, but they need to ensure that the product is up to the task. There are safety standards out there to ensure the quality of the product. However, word of mouth can kill a piece of protective equipment, if multiple stories of injuries were to spread into the marketplace.

Puck drops for Going Shelf

Welcome to the beginning of this blog, which I hope will provide you with some interesting takes on how the sport of hockey is being marketed, to both North American, and International markets. I have started this blog because, I have a passion for sports marketing from when I attended university and studied the academic side of this field, and also because I love hockey and find the way it is distributed and marketed to be both interesting as a mass market, and niche sport.

Hockey was not a sport that I was brought up with, I am from the UK, so my awareness of the sport as a child was minimal. I guess the first real contact I had with the sport, was when I was bought a copy of NHL 2003, and I found it hugely entertaining to hit players down to the ice and score a hell of a lot of goals (on easy mode). This basic knowledge, given to me by EA Sports, was all I had until I was 19 and left my homeland for the summer, to work at a summer camp in New York.