Researchers Aim for More Protective Women’s Ice Hockey Gear

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By Tom Fleischman

This story was condensed from a feature in the Cornell Chronicle.

The website for Bauer, one of the biggest names in ice hockey equipment and apparel, lists 26 options for shoulder pads, which offer shoulder and upper torso protection for players in what can be a very fast and dangerous sport.

Of those 26 styles for youth and adults, exactly one is made specifically for women. The other major player in hockey gear, CCM, also has just one women’s model advertised on its site.

“It is shocking that the men have so many options and the women have just one,” says Tulasi Elangovan, MA ’23, a former member of the Performance Apparel Design Lab, directed by Heeju Park, associate professor of apparel design in the College of Human Ecology.

“That’s just such an inequality in the market,” Elangovan says, “especially when women’s ice hockey is actually growing at a much faster rate than men’s.”

Last year, while pursuing her master’s in apparel design, Elangovan dedicated many months to researching and designing a prototype for a shoulder pad made especially for women.

That design, informed by contributions from the nationally ranked Cornell women’s hockey team, is being considered for possible patent protection by the University’s Center for Technology Licensing, with whom Park has worked closely for several months.

It is shocking that the men have so many options and the women have just one.

Tulasi Elangovan, MA ’23

After Elangovan graduated, another member of Park’s lab, master’s student Huieun Do, joined the project. Do is focusing on improving design and function of lower-body (thigh-to-ankle) protective gear.

Elangovan’s involvement in a sport about which she knew very little began after women’s hockey head coach Doug Derraugh ’91 read a Cornell Chronicle story about wearable sensors that could be used to measure motion, respiration, and fatigue in athletes, with the aim of reducing injuries and improving training and performance.

“I thought, man, that would be interesting for a coach, if you had material in an athlete’s clothing that could actually measure vital statistics and things,” says Derraugh, a former high-scoring forward for Big Red men’s hockey who played professionally in Europe for 13 years before returning to his alma mater in 2005.

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Derraugh paid a visit to Park to inquire about wearable sensors, and Park told him about Elangovan and her research interests.

Elangovan began her work on the hockey project by interviewing nearly a dozen members of the Big Red women’s team, whom she found supportive, enthusiastic, and helpful.

“Being that we usually wear equipment designed for men, it’s not as slim-fitting for women or accommodating for the different body types,” says Rory Guilday ’25, who won gold with Team USA at the 2023 International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s World Championships.

“Sometimes, if you want more protection, you’ll go for a bigger size,” says the 5-foot-11 Guilday, one of the team’s three captains. “But then it doesn’t fit somewhere else.”

Sometimes, if you want more protection, you’ll go for a bigger size—but then it doesn’t fit somewhere else.

Big Red women's ice hockey co-captain Rory Guilday ’25

Those sentiments are echoed by fellow team captain Ashley Messier ’25, who’s 5-foot-3 and plays defense.

“I would say the biggest problem is that protective gear just has never been made considering the difference in anatomy, which is kind of crazy considering there’s a pretty big difference,” says Messier. “We just never really knew any better. We just wore the equipment, not really realizing that it could be a lot more efficient and comfortable and protective.”

After conducting player interviews, Elangovan invited team members to Human Ecology’s Digital Fashion & Body Scan Research Lab, which has a full-body scanner that uses eight cameras and four eye-safe lasers to capture about 300,000 data points for each scan.

According to Park, the scans pointed to a key difference related to the fit of shoulder pads for men and women.

“We realized that in people of the same body height, the female torso is shorter than the male torso,” he says. “It’s a statistically significant difference that plays a critical role in enhancing protection, mobility, and comfort for female players.”

Elangovan did numerous scans for each of the participating players; those images helped her come up with a women’s shoulder pad design that she thinks will offer a better fit for the contours of the female body, along with greater protection.

“You want to make sure that the gear that you’ve given the players can protect them from all sorts of impact; that’s the only way that these players can actually perform at their maximum capacity,” she says. “Otherwise, they’re going to be worried about slippage of gear, or something getting caught in another player’s stick, or the puck getting somewhere it shouldn’t. All of these are things that are going to detract from the players’ performance and confidence.”

Top: The Big Red goes up against Union at Lynah in January 2023. (Cornell Athletics)

Published October 24, 2023

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