The journeyman, playing for his fifth team in nine seasons, knows the equipment staff are his “lifeblood” as a goalie and worries that a midseason pad replacement would just pile onto their workloads. With Lyon under contract through next season, white-and-red alternate pads will have to wait until the summer.
“Thank god I’ve been reasonably successful in them, otherwise I probably would have switched,” he continued. “It was just a moment of weakness, and next year, I’ll definitely not get the black gear.”
“Alex, he’s being kind to the team. He could easily ask for a different set of black gear for that uniform,” reacted head equipment manager Dave Williams, adding that TRUE brand, which Lyon switched to from Vaughn last summer, has a roughly three-week turnaround for pad orders.
While light-colored pads change how the 6-foot-1 Lyon feels, the way he wears them actually improves his coverage of the net. Explaining his setup, Lyon pointed to the laces connecting his skate holder to the bottom of his leg pad – they’re unusually loose, he demonstrated.
“So, whenever I go down, basically my pad sits off my skate this much (points to gap), and I gain like six inches of width from my butterfly,” he continued. “You have to have other crazy attributes in order to survive as a small goalie. It’s just math: the bigger you are, the more space you take up.”
Lyon’s approach is in stark contrast to that of tandem-mate Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, one of the NHL’s tallest goalies at 6-foot-5. Luukkonen cinches his leg pads super tight and with leather straps, not the more typical, modern Velcro. He had the straps removed near the knees, keeping things nice and loose up top while secure down low.