New Skate buying 2017-18 season

[LowStoneWall32 3]

My cowlings are cracked, blades barely stuck in there... Time for new skates!

I'll be playing high school level and need a solid skate that can take shots. But also have a small budget, so I need the most durable skate for the best deal. Any recommendations? I was looking at the Vaughn GX1 or 3's. 

[IPv6Freely 2082]

Whatever fits your feet and is within your budget. VH is obviously off the table, so I'd hit a store and try everything on. Same advice as you'll get for a player skate, really. 

[bunnyman666 445]

@IPv6Freely said it best. That being said, with fewer and fewer options for stores to look at their offerings and some stores only carrying three lines of skates (if not fewer), it gets tough to figure out what may fit. 

I owned the Vaughn skates. I will say that they fit wider than other offerings by design.  The GX-1 were amongst my favourites, the GX-2 were too stiff. I love the tall cowlings on the Vaughn skates. I will say, since there are only two sizes of cowlings (8 and 11), your optimal feel is if you're close to the upper part of the size. I got along well with the size 8 cowling since my skate size is 7.5. I still use the Vaughn cowl on my VH skates, along with Step Extreme steel. Another thing is the stock runner has HORRIBLE steel. You will spend another $100-130 for step steel replacement steel, which you have to special order separately. If you don't buy the Step, you will spend $25 to profile the steel to get it flat (read many reviews about the stock steel and you'll know it wasn't just ME who did that). 

Bottom line is to get your skates from an online store with a very generous return policy if you can't try multiple brands in the store and for G'd's sake don't bake or sharpen them UNTIL you know they fit. And please don't "showroom"- if your local store has them and you tried them on, buy them there! They will bake and sharpen them for free!

Happy hunting.

[LowStoneWall32 3]

K thanks guys!