EVERETT — Portland Winter Hawks trainer Innes Mackie is something of a legend in the Western Hockey League. Mackie is renown for being able to recognize an illegal stick at first glance, and it’s believed that he’s never been wrong when challenging a stick’s legality.

So when the Winter Hawks twice asked for measurements on sticks used by the Everett Silvertips late in the third period of last Sunday’s game, there was little doubt the Silvertips were going to be penalized.

"I was like, ‘Oh damn,’" Everett’s Marc Desloges, the second Silvertip to be victimized following Martin Ruzicka, said about his reaction when the officials came to measure his stick.

"Once they called Rosie’s I was like, ‘No, they’re not going to call another one,’ so I didn’t even bother to get a legal stick. Oh well."

Both Desloges and Ruzicka were given two-minute penalties for having too much curvature on their blade. Fortunately for the Silvertips, Portland was unable to score on either penalty and Everett went on to win 3-1. But it was a brush with what may be hockey’s least-followed rule.

Illegal sticks have been around in hockey ever since rules governing sticks were put into place. Illegal sticks have been used by the best players in hockey and have played roles in the most important games. During the 1993 Stanley Cup Finals, Los Angeles Kings defenseman Marty McSorley was penalized for using an illegal stick late in Game 2. Montreal scored the tying goal on the resulting power play, won the game in overtime, then won the next three to take the series 4-1. And in the 1998 documentary, "The New Ice Age — A year in the Life of the NHL," then-Dallas Stars forward Brett Hull, one of the best snipers in NHL history, is filmed telling his equipment manager, "I need my legal stick."

"I’d say 20 to 30 to 50 percent of players probably have illegal sticks," Everett coach Kevin Constantine estimated.

There are several different ways in which a hockey stick can be illegal. The stick cannot exceed 63 inches in length and the blade cannot exceed 12 1/2inches in length. Also, the blade must be between two inches and three inches in width. These rules prevent sticks from becoming so big that they turn into walls for blocking the puck rather than tools for moving the puck.

But the most prominent way sticks are illegal is in the blade’s curvature, for which both Everett and McSorley suffered their penalties. The rule states that when a straight line is drawn from point to heel of the blade, the distance between the blade and the line cannot exceed one-half inch.

The reason for making the blade more curved is to improve shots. The more curve, the more spin put on the puck on a shot. The more spin, the faster the puck travels. Therefore, greater curve equates to a harder shot.

The differences between a legal and an illegal stick are barely visible, and the effects of the extra curvature are minimal, hence the two-minute penalty as opposed to the type of suspension handed out for using a corked bat in baseball. But it is enough that hockey players continue to risk using illegal sticks.

"You don’t see it called very often," said Everett equipment manager James Stucky, who mentioned that most equipment managers can recognize illegal sticks. "Coaches hate it. Especially coaches that don’t like the rule and will never call it, they hate when it’s called against them.

"I don’t think it’s a big secret per se among the equipment managers and trainers in this league, because they know," Stucky added. "I think it boils down to the player. The player knows and has the option to choose what he wants to use and what he’s comfortable with. The reward is definitely much greater than the risk. There’s very little risk. I can’t even remember the last time I saw it called (before Sunday)."

And the players don’t even have to work for their illegal curvature anymore. It used to be that teams would travel with rasps, sanders and saws to tinker with their wooden sticks. But most of today’s sticks are one-piece carbon sticks that will break if a player tries to alter it. Therefore, the manufacturers just make sticks that are illegal.

"We’re talking fractions of an inch can make you illegal and many sticks come from the manufacturer half illegal, half right on the edge," Constantine said. "So you’re always flirting with that. It’s just the players have got to understand that at any point they could risk something very negative for the team by using a stick that’s illegal."

But not all the risk is assumed by the player who’s using an illegal stick. When a team challenges a stick’s legality and the stick turns out to be legal, the challenging team is assessed a two-minute penalty. That’s one of the reasons why stick challenges are so rare.

Of course, the other reason challenges are so rare is that in all likelihood, there’s several players on your own team using illegal sticks, too.

And now the Silvertips know the dangers associated with using illegal sticks.

"It’s not a call you see very often, but it’s in the rule book and it’s certainly one they have the option of using," Constantine said. " (Portland) did it twice, so we got away with a hard lesson without having to pay a heavy penalty for the lesson."