The first curved blade was actually not made by Stan Mikita, but by Cy Denneny of the Ottawa Senators. He made his curved blade by dipping the blade in hot water and then forming the curve with his hands. He would be able to bend the blade pretty easily because of the heat, and then once the heat was taken away, the blade would stay in the same form that he curved it in. Because of the fact that Cy Denneny's curve was so big and it made his shot unpredictable, no body really copied the invention and his curve did not change the game in any way at all. But what happened next did. In the late 1950's, Stan Mikita made his banana blade, and that was really the starting point for all blades. Because at first the curved blade made slapshots so unpredictable that even the player didn't know where the puck was going to go. This created a danger to other players and the league made a rule that your curve could not be more than 1/2 an inch. This rule still remains and although the curve (The place it is bent) has evolved, the curves serve for the same purpose that they did at first.