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So I put my elbows on first, then the jersey which helped get them up over my elbows easily... but then they got stuck on my shoulder pad caps and a teammate had to pull it back down over those :'D I can't win. I have mako shoulder pads which aren't the smallest but I guess I'll try and get the jersey totally over the shoulder caps first...then try and get my arms in. Jeez.

From my perspective from someone who does this periodically, you are going to learn something that first lap out. You will get feedback on how you are placing you weight on each skate (good chance it isn’t perfectly equal). You will start to understand better how the different muscles of the foot contribute to controlling the skate and applying pressure within. If you have a specific issue, like turning one way or the other or a certain edge, it will make it worse but you will get magnified feedback on where things are going wrong.

Sounds good! We're very excited about this launch! We already have had national team players using them in the World Roller Games in Barcelona, NARCH and other top tournaments. Apart from the aluminum there's other performance enhancement features. It's a game changer for roller hockey no doubt 🙂

And I had this discussion a while ago with other coaches at a seminar. It's not in US LTP programme, we have never heard about it, that's not what I was taught etc etc are the excuses. Me - Why are you telling the to tie their laces tight? Reply - Oh, because it makes them more stable. Me - Yes - but it doesn't fix the problem..... Yet ask them about a skater who drops 1 eyelet. this is perfectly acceptable. What about a skater who drops 2? Or 3? Or 4? When does this become "I've never heard of that"? Tell that to the young elite NHL skaters coming thru atm and are dropping eyelets. Bottom line is you either give it a go or not, I'm not trying to sell anyone snake oil here or ask you to sign up for a service or training programme or try to take your money. It's free advice based on hard experience and been involved in a (so far) 3 year long varsity research project looking into specifically this issue. And this is the consistent thing, the deniers are those who have NEVER tried it yet everyone who I have had try it (from beginner to experienced) has never said it didn't help..The degrees of improvement are based on your bio mechanics..

I never said irrelevant, I said it is secondary. Bio mechanics should be the first and most important consideration because if you don't get that correct you will never be able to control the skate correctly. And laces undone is hard, I won't deny it. But getting your holder alignment correct isn't a physically hard thing to do and any age can do it, it's skate related not age. This is the problem with hockey and attitudes like this, bio mechanics don't really matter / are something I might fix later. This is just bs. Racing slicks on a prius is like your hollow on a skate, driving a prius blindfolded is more akin to not addressing your bio mechanics.

Between the team “taking a year off for politics,” and the new coach thinking he’s the Lou Lamoriello of hockey for preteens, no wonder kids just want to play the fortnight and not do sports. Adults are the worst and ruin everything.

So I followed up with True support on this. Honestly my experience working with them on this issue has been real positive. Hoping the results work out for me. They did confirm the 9/16th. I was told they typically do 1/8 and 9/16th, with the 9/16th for more extreme examples to totally flatten out the skate. The True rep said 1/8 is a good spot to start, and to switch to a higher shim if needed. Also super stoked as the store told me 6-8 weeks (!) to get the skates, but I got an email today saying the skates were in production...and I got my fitting yesterday. Turns out I may get the skate under two weeks. Has been a real positive experience thus far.

@Leif - I'm 49...

Some interesting points, Laura Stamm has an article on her website way back in 2001 cautioning against the general skater getting in too stiff a boot. As for the pros using stiff skates, getting back to the car analogy- Once you are a great driver you can squeeze every bit of performance out of a 900 HP F1 car but if you or I got in it would be a hinderance to learn the skills of racing and driving. Better skaters like pros have good edge control and can leverage the modern boot.

One problem is that you are thinking that less stiff skates are “down-spec’ed” and that being less stiff somehow equates to less quality.

Just to reiterate. Stiff doesnt = fast. Proper form = fast. Look at the mechanics of Crosby, McDavid and Mackinnon and you can see they are all wearing skates that are stiff enough to support their movements but they do not rely on the boot itself for stability. I think a lot of this has to be with players using their hips more instead of using their legs, like comparing Jagr vs McDavid skating styles.

Not at all. Just pointing out that "top of the line" is not synonymous with "super stiff". In fact, the OG Jetspeed is probably closer in stiffness to the 3rd price point in the Bauer 1S and 1X lines.

I don't understand why not all dealers are doing the recommended shrink wrap method though...

Unless he has changed this season, McDavid wears the OG Jetspeed which is not really very stiff. He also skates with the top eyelet undone.

Both Marleau and McDavid compete on less stiff than current top-end stiffness. Looking backwards in skate history there have always been skaters who exhibit remarkable speed and agility. Look at the dynamic skating of Valeri Kharlamov and it’s clear boots don’t have to be stiff for players to do what they need to do on the ice.

Yeahhh I mean I'm not an overly large fella. I have a slightly wider shoulder/chest measurement relative to my arm length and body height, but meh. As stated above these are "modern" fitting, so they are tighter. Wish I'd have known I prob would have gone XXL and just dealt with longer sleeves, even hemmed them back a bit. Got another game Weds... Will see how it goes if I put the whole dang jersey on over my shoulders first, then see if I can maneuver my arms in there with elbows on. Might need to change thread title to smallest shoulder pads if I can't haha XD

Some players tend to rely on the stiffness of the skate boot to compensate for lack of skill or ankle strength. Too often I have parents wanting to buy their young kids top of the line youth/junior skates that are very stiff. I have to spend considerable time talking them out of spending money on something that may prevent their children from properly developing the correct muscles and edge control organically. In their mind, expensive means better and they want to get their kids the best tools available. Too foten I see them flexing the skate collar comparing a pair of AS1 vs a pair of Ribcor and they say the Ribcor is cheap without understanding specifically why the Ribcor is designed with flexibility.

If you live in the states, you can get a roll of the wrap pretty cheap at Harbor Freight: https://www.harborfreight.com/5-in-x-1000-ft-high-performance-stretch-wrap-61519.html

If you check out John Schiavo's Instagram you can see a sneak preview of the new frames.

I would say this about the analogy, nobody said crap skates, but the relative minutiae between one good enough pair of skates and another good enough pair of skates isn’t going to matter much to a beginner. i think the better analogy may be, given a basic vehicle that is good enough, the better driver is going to win the race.

If there is an exposed heating element at the top of the oven, you might want to place a layer of foil on a rack just below the element, but above the skate. That will prevent the oven toasting the skate. Or skip the foil and shove a slice of cheese on.

When I started I was slow as hell, any attempt to stride out caused my heel to lift. I used to lace all the way up for games. Over time the way my feet worked in the boot changed and my push became much smoother, harder and flatter and my heel stopped lifting. I now prefer to skate laces untied over laced up, as others have commented it becomes about as natural as walking. Performance wise it's been bloody hard, pushing hard and feeling your ankles collapse under you is really really frustrating but over time my ankle has got stronger and my control of the blade has improved to the point I can now go flat out with no laces and no thoughts about heel lock etc The 4 eyelets lock my forefoot into place, provides a little more stability and is game compliant (once I managed to get the national head ref controller to approve it). But I do wear skate fenders, the space where the tongue lifts out of the boot and leaves the foot exposed is not something I will risk in a game..

Hey! Yes, we're actually in the process of finalizing the designs of a performance roller hockey version of the frame, with the lower frame in aluminum. Keep your eyes open for this. We'll start a pre-order campaign later this fall. //Per

Howdy, Amazing how much "normal" shifts... I started out with this reffing thing last December as a way to still skate with my wife. Didn't plan to make money doing it. NEVER wanted to ref a kids game. Fast forward to yesterday. At this point I've got ~90 games in. Earned $3.6k (gross). Gotten certified with USA Hockey. And I reffed a kid's travel game. Something I was adamantly against doing. 🙂 It was fun though. I've mostly done beer league stuff (no stats, refs run the score board, running clock, etc.) I did do a couple informal-ish kids summer games. But this was my first game where I needed to see / report goals and assists, penalties, etc. Luckily it was a pretty easy game. I'd liked doing Squirt age stuff when I did those few kids games over the summer and this was no different. The pace isn't overwhelming (I did one highschool game as part of the summer stuff, and my brain just didn't process hockey that fast). Parents and coaches still seem to realize that these are 9 and 10 year olds. Etc. It was also nice that my partner was a good ref (Highschool senior kid of a guy I played with on a beer league team. He's been playing since he was 4. 🙂 Honestly though, the absolute best part of the whole thing is that they play music when the play is stopped. That rocked. Literally. 🙂 Just kinda struck me how different this is from where I started. It is very much still just a hobby / "something to do". But I've enjoyed learning more about it, getting better at it, etc. No question that a big part of how I got here was messing up my wrist in April and wanting to keep skating. Of those 90 games, 74 are from that point. I've still got a SHIT TON to learn to be anything like a good ref. And reading back over this thread I'm seeing plenty of stuff that I said I needed to get better at that I still 100% need to get WAY better at. But I see myself making progress and that's fun. Appreciate the advice I've gotten here! Mark

How about not ruin a perfectly good helmet and void all warranty and or protection standard for a 10 year old. A you need is something going wrong and the plastic getting weak and some stupid person taking a slap shot and hitting the kid on the head.... You may laugh and say BS... it happened. Kid got a puck in the forehead and the paint caused the plastic to go soft. Lucky only a few cuts and a concussion. Dont paint helmets...please

Depending on the scan and skate selected CCM will make adjustments to the facing if needed, even if the customer doesn't specify such.

I have to agree. This looks totally normal.

Tell the coach to suck it?

Is stuff like this common in youth hockey? Helmet vent color seems so far out of the realm of importance and sends the wrong message to literally everyone involved.

Well, there it is. I quit hockey tonight. So I guess that’s it.

Well it looks like I’m not going to be skating anytime soon. I’m not only not getting my drain taken out, but I’ll be getting an additional drain. My current drain only addresses one side of my liver. The new drain will be for the other side. The potential devastating news I got today is that if the additional drain isn’t successful then I would need surgery to attempt to open my bile ducts. It’s a major operation that could damage the major artery and cause the need for a transplant very soon afterwards. This wasn’t the information I was planning on getting today.