I decided to research something involved with hockey because I wanted to research something that I am interested in so I do not get bored and lose interest halfway through. Next, I had to find something within hockey that was relevant and searchable. I first thought that I could look at changes in padded equipment and how that relates to the number of injuries. But, I realized that I would only be going off pictures for the equipment instead of watching the players play. That's why I landed on skates and sticks because they are both big parts of the game and you need them to play. Also, they have both changed drastically because of the new technology being introduced. For example, the new carbon fibers are being used to make skates and sticks which makes them lighter and more powerful.

I plan to collect data by watching NHL All-Star competitions, specifically the fastest skater and hardest shot competitions. I chose to watch these two competitions because they will give me the best reliable data, as the players are trying to skate as fast as possible and shoot as hard as they can. While watching the games I will open a Google spreadsheet to collect data. I have different columns of data of what I am collecting, one being the year the competitions took place and the names of the shooters and the skaters along with their skate/shot time. After collecting all of that data I will find what stick/skate each player is using and compare and contrast that to their standings in the competition. I will be finding their skate/stick by using the website GeerGeek. GeerGeek will provide me with the equipment that players use in a specific year. With this data, I will hopefully be able to see the difference in skates and sticks throughout these competitions and also see changes in the skating times as well as the shot speeds. All of this data will then go into a professional table and graph to represent the data I collected.