The Joy of Ditching Toe-Ties

Have you ever really wondered what toe ties actually do?

Other than increase the risk of injury, they don't do much for the modern butterfly goalie. They're a legacy of the stand-up days.

Lots of people have gotten rid of them, and never looked back.

I started what has become a long, long thread on GSBB, Goalies' Liberation: Burn Your Toe Ties!, that features the experiences of lots of goalies who have tried getting rid of their toe-ties, and have been amazed by the results. There's a ton of good discussion on there, and a ton of user-experiences, it may be valuable to read through it and bring some discussion here.

It does take some strapping adjustments, and some people haven't liked it. However, the vast majority of those who have said they tried it out have loved it.

They've confirmed that the only difference they noticed is less strain in the knees, wider more flexible butterfly, less chance of injury, and of course getting dressed faster (which really doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme, but is a nice side-benefit).

The only adjustment I had to make was that I moved the boot strap to the heel of my skate, instead of the middle. I used to run my boot strap through the middle of the skate (and quite loosely), but when I tried without toe-ties/bridges, the pads felt loose and sloppy. When I thought about it, I had been using the toe-ties to keep the skate somewhat close to my boot, but this wasn't necessary at all. Instead, I moved the boot strap through the heel and kept it loose enough that the pad could rotate freely, but tight enough that the boot break always stayed close to my ankle (right where it should be).

Obviously, you can't expect to remove toe-ties (or have one break mid-game) and for it to feel right without making strapping adjustments! It takes a little bit of tinkering to get it right, but once you do, your pads feel and move exactly the same as they used to (actually, they feel better).

Now, there's no NHL goalies doing this, so that may rule this idea right out for many of you, but before Plante put on his mask, before Roy and Allaire started tinkering with rotating pads and the butterfly style, there were no NHL goalies doing that either. The equipment of goaltending is always changing, and has changed drastically recently, but the toe ties really haven't all that much. I think they should. I think they're deprecated with today's modern pads.

I'd encourage anybody to give this a fair shot. Try it out, but make sure you do some carpet-flying to get the strapping adjustments dialed in, and still give yourself some time to tinker with the strapping once you hit the ice. You can run the toe-ties up the leg channel and tie them off on a buckle when you're playing with it (though this pulls the toe-block into the boot channel, which *every so often* can slightly affect rotation, not really a big deal for testing though).

Whatever you do, don't do this just before a game and expect it to work without tinkering with the straps! It took me about 20 minutes to figure out what worked for me, and I haven't looked back since. If you're willing to really give it a shot, I'm convinced that you can make any semi-modern pad work beautifully without toe-ties.

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The Rationale

Toe-ties were important in the days of stand-up goalies. They were tied without slack, and as a result, they kept the pad facing in the same direction as the foot. This is much less important now. Indeed, toe-ties are not at all required in order to have your pad do exactly what you want it to do.

1. Toe-ties don't really do anything.

Think about the following:

A. The toe-ties only functionality is to prevent rotation.
B. We want our pads to rotate.
C. Before toe-ties hit their max length, they do *absolutely nothing*. Until a string is taught, it is effectively not there.
D. The only time a toe-tie is taught, is doing anything, is when you are in your butterfly, the exact time when you want your pads to be able to rotate!

I have tried varying amounts of slack in the toe-ties, sliding-toe-bridges (with and without slack), flextoes, etc. Each of them still has the issues above (flex-toes do have a bit of pull, even before they hit max length, but otherwise they have the same characteristics).

Many, probably all of us, can get toe-ties to work well for our regular butterfly. We find the appropriate amount of slack, or we use sliding toe-bridges, etc so that we can do our butterfly with little or no strain or discomfort.

When you think about it though, toe-ties are not required to have a good butterfly (obviously they can only hinder rotation, not help it).

The most common rationale for wearing toe-ties seems to be that they keep your pad facing square, but this just isn't the case. I and many other goalies have found that the pads come back square perfectly fine, even without any kind of toe-attachment.

Again, when you think about it, since a string does nothing when it's slack, and toe-tie users usually have enough slack so that their pads can rotate a fair bit in their butterfly, all the toe-tie can do is set a maximum amount of rotation. They can't actually make your pad square (flex-toes are better at this, but not necessary). You can easily rotate your pad in both directions 15-30° off square when standing, and the toe-ties will never get taught, will never do anything.

No, it's a myth that toe-ties are necessary for this. I've found that instead, it's the knee-lock, and to a lesser extent the overall shape of the pad, that are what's bringing the pad back square. Indeed I can do up *only* my knee lock, just put my leg unstrapped in the pad, and the pad will rotate well going into a carpet fly and come back square coming out of it. Pads are built to stay square, the slack shoelace has nothing to do with it.

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2. Toe-ties don't really do anything... except lead to strain and injury.

The real reason to ditch the toe-ties isn't because they don't do what we think they are supposed to do, indeed they actually hinder pad rotation (and only *exactly when we want them to rotate*), instead the real reason to ditch them is that they can lead to huge rotational strain on our legs. This strain can cause knee and ankle injury through either gradual and additive or catastrophically sudden means.

Let's be clear: 99.9% of the time, you will have little or no problem, you will have none of these troubles with toe ties. However it's that uncommon, but not altogether rare occurrence that will get you. That gets many goalies from beer leagues to the NHL.

Where toe-ties get you is in those scrambly plays and collisions where you fall or are pushed over a pad or between your pads and your leg *needs to rotate*, but is prevented, is locked into a max-rotation by the toe ties. When the leg needs to rotate, but the foot is fixed to an object that is not rotating, then something has to give. That something is usually the knees.

You won't find any NHL goalies running without toe-ties, but you can read about a lot of NHL goalies straining or tearing their MCLs, many of these injuries are made much more severe by their toe-ties:

nhl goalie mcl - Google Search

The MCL can be damaged through one of two usual ways:

First: A lateral impact from the outside of the knee which bends the leg the wrong way at the knee. There's nothing that toe-ties have to do with this. This can and does happen to goalies and skaters alike (It tends to happen to skaters more frequently, as you'd expect based on the way skaters play).

Second: The lower leg rotating outward from the body, independently of the upper leg. This is the Butterfly Goalie's MCL injury. This is caused by exactly the rotational strain that toe-ties introduce.

I speak from experience with this. I suffered a pretty bad double knee dislocation which tore both MCLs and a PCL (all Grade 3) in a collision while I was in the butterfly. I'm convinced that had I not been wearing my toe ties, I would have been far, far better off. I may not have escaped injury, but my injury would have been far less severe.

What happened to me was pretty much identical to what happened to Boucher in the video below. Though, Boucher was lucky in that he wasn't squashed quite as flat as I was, when the huge D-man decided to tackle the huge forward, landing in my lap and across my legs. In the relatively minor collision below, Boucher strained both MCLs. His right MCL was sprained, even though it was barely touched. It was sprained because of the rotational strain caused by the anatomically impossible position his legs were in (exacerbated in no small part by the toe-ties).

That hurts to watch, both from the remembered pain and the knowledge that much of the severeness could have been prevented. Hopefully other goalies can learn from our misfortunes.

Look at Boucher's feet when he's squashed flat. The overhead view at 1:15 is best. His feet are parallel to the ice (and up near his hips). Your legs simply *cannot* do that. His upper legs are rotated 90 degrees from where his feet are rotated. The knee is the weak point, pop, pop, pop go the ligaments.

If he wasn't wearing toe ties, his feet would have been free to extend (point) and rotate. The same pressure would have existed in the system, but instead of all the rotational strain being relieved by the tearing in his knees (ouch!), his feet could have rotated some. Granted, there was weight on his feet, they may not have rotated all the way, but they could certainly have rotated *some* and undoubtedly more than the *zero* rotation his toe-ties allowed.

Without toe-ties, you would be quite surprised at the ability for your foot to rotate, even while under some weight, especially when the alternative is having your leg ripped half-off.

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3. How not using ties is different.

When you get right down to it, you have to think about the wisdom of locking your toes into pads which sometimes cannot rotate. There *will* be times, not often, but not all that rare, when your leg needs to rotate further than the ties allow, but they are completely prevented by the toe-ties. When this happens, especially if there is a high amount of force causing the legs to need to rotate, it can be catastrophic for the knees.

Without toe-ties, I can get sit on my butt between my pads with my knees together and on the ice without strain. I can reach over my pad to cover a puck at my boot. I can reach way over, and even if I'm pushed, I can fall over that pad. I can roll right over the pad without any trouble. I can feel little or no strain even in scrambly situations.

I never have any issues with pad rotation. They go smoothly into the butterfly, they come smoothly and perfectly out of the butterfly. I don't even notice pad rotation at all.

Also, the toe of the pad stays right where you want it, right up against the skate. There's no increased gap between your toe and your skate when you ditch your toe ties, the heel strap pulls the toe down just perfectly. Look at the following two pictures for an example of this.

Without toe-ties, the heel strap keeps the toe of the pad just where you want it: pulled down on top of your skate.


Because I'm pushing off, my left foot is pointed more in this picture.
Notice that the toe of the pad gets pointed as well, because the heel strap is pulling the pad down toward the skate.
There's no more gap for puck to sneak through without toe-ties, and toe ties certainly aren't needed to point the toe of your pad.

Every once in a while, after you ditch your toe-ties, you'll be in a scrambly situation, you'll be pushed or collided with, you'll fall over a pad, etc, and you'll stand up, but your pad is pointed 90° (or more!) around your leg. That's happened to me twice in the past year of running without toe-ties. Think about that though. Think about why that's actually a good thing.

If you ever stand up and your pad is rotated half-way (or more!) around your leg, that means that running without toe ties just saved you!

Whatever force needed to rotate your leg and pads independently would have been prevented by the toe-ties, that force would have still been there, but because the lower leg was locked to the pad, all that strain would have gone straight into your knee. Depending on how much force caused the pad to rotate like that, it might have saved you from something catastrophic.

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Closing

Anyway, I've written all that in the hopes that what I've experienced, what I've thought about, and what I've learned may encourage others to really think about toe-ties, toe-bridges, etc as well. I really hope that you will give a fair shot at ditching your toe-ties/bridges/etc, because I think that will extend your career (not to mention make you more flexible and comfortable in the butterfly).

I encourage all of you to have an open mind and give it real try. A lot of goalies have given it a fair shot, and they've been amazed at how much better it feels. Some of them have reported standing up after a scramble with a leg pad twisted half-way around and really wondered what might have happened if their toe had been tied to that pad.

Remember, it won't work without some tinkering. You may have to spend 20 minutes tweaking your strapping, but I'm certain that if you've got pads that butterfly well with toe ties, they can work just as well without. You'll be as comfortable (probably more!) and safer without the toe-ties.

Good luck!

If you do your straps up too tightly you can have issues. That's true with or without any sort of toe-tie system.

The idea that you have to have your pads or your boot strap tight when not using toe-ties is just a myth that I, and many others are happy to confirm is simply untrue.

As I mentioned, I wear my straps quite loose. I'll describe Temple's Hokey-Pokey Pad Tightness Test:

I wear my pads loose enough that I can stick my leg in front of me and rotate my foot back and forth so that my pad starts rotating back and forth around the leg. Of course when I stop, the pad always comes back square.