As a goalie, I'm skeptical about claims that those pads will fool players. In fact, one school of thought says that pads should be dark so that the goalie appears as large and imposing as possible.<p>Regardless of their effectiveness, I think they look cool.
Neat concept, but I'm pretty impressed by how the design turned out. Credit should go to Stomp in this case, looks like they executed the concept quite well. Goalies are a special bunch -- I suppose spending more than half your time standing alone leaves you plenty of time to explore your artistic side (see the great masks out there) and think up ways to gain an edge on your opponent.
First time I've seen a blocker design for visual confusion, but some existing leg pad designs do incorporate this kind of visual trick to attempt to make the 5-hole look bigger.<p>Here's a long list of thumbnails of pads: <a href="http://www.hockeyworld.com/catHome.ihtml?catID=30&shop=0&snum=1&enum=84&p=0&sortBy=new" rel="nofollow">http://www.hockeyworld.com/catHome.ihtml?catID=30&shop=0...</a><p>Note that while some just try to look cool, there is a common pattern of diagonal stripes from the inside of the knee to the outside of the foot - when you go down into a butterfly, the idea is that this makes it look like your knees are bent more than they are, and the five-hole is bigger than it is, because the insides of the foot and shin are white like the inside of the crease.<p>The Vaughan VPG 6* look the most like they're trying to fool the eye. Interestingly, others come close but ruin it by letting a dark pattern repeat right at the inside of the toe.<p>I thought that this was a Patrick Roy innovation, but couldn't remember where I read about it first.