Leaderboard

well i survived my first stick time as tendy. it was fun, it was exhausting. i felt a bit dehydrated out there so i made sure to drink plenty of water every so often. there was another goalie out there, a high school kid who was legit! this was pretty much free for all and we did a lil cross ice 3 on 3. so i got some taste of trying to see the puck through traffic! i felt awkward, bulky and silly at times but i did make some saves when people were taking shots from outside. i stopped a few deke attempts but towards the end, i was too beat to go down to try to make a save. i was trying to concentrate on my angles, and telescoping. i did make saves with each piece of equipment, so it was cool to see how they all felt when being hit with a puck. my right arm was also feeling very fatigued towards the end of the session. this was my first time wearing my goalie skates on the oce and they felt great, no pain at all! (graf goaler elite) monday nights clinic should be exhausting as well but at least there will be a goalie coach out there to offer up instruction.

First game in the new skates. A bit stiff, as you might expect new skates to be, so a little pain on that count, but mostly soreness, nothing unbearably awful. Other than that everything is all pear-shaped. First the blades felt too dull, probably because they're wider, because later they felt plenty sharp. Long, flat steel makes maneuvering precarious and I felt like I no longer knew how to drop properly. It got a little better, but the first time I dropped in warm up it felt like someone fired an electric shock up the outside of both thighs. Fucking smarts. I think that was the toe lacings, which I was trying since now I have goalie skates, but I took out immediately. I'll figure those out later. I've heard people recommend the bungee-style toe straps? Things got better after about the first 2/3rds of the game, including the soreness, so hopefully I'll feel better next week. Overall kind of frustrating, but no fundamental problems with the skates, just a matter of climbing that steep learning curve. Next week I should be able to do the clinic afterward, too, so I'll get some tips from the coaches and some nice, slow practice not killing myself. Once again I got hit in the Triangle-of-Pain (somewhere between the top of the medial padding and where my pants don't quite cover) where my thigh wraps do nothing. Is it possible to permanently damage muscles if you get hit in one place over and over again? I hope not. Obviously, my next paycheck should go toward proper knee protection.

Yeah, that's the kind of session where people just want to dangle, deke, and score. Pickup is often like that. :( If you can wrangle a friend to go with you, maybe they can take some video. Doesn't have to be a goalie-friend, just so you can look at the footage later. What my coaches have me (and the other goalies) doing most of the time is just movement - shuffles, t-pushes, more shuffles, forward, back. Slalom forward, slalom back. Rocking horse (or sausage link, depending on who taught you) forward and back. Lots of shuffling. If you don't feel up to shuffling, you can side-step. That helps build up the muscles and it's the foundation for everything else. The other basic drill is the 'two puck' drill, where you have one puck about a foot from the top of the crease at either post, skate up to one puck, skate back to the middle, skate out to the other, back to the opposite post. It's hard when you have people always swooping down to steal your puck, I'm sure. You could try tiny cones. USA Hockey calls these "letter drills", because you make various letters of the alphabet as you skate, shuffle, and push your way around the crease. The example above would be an M. You can also try a W, an E, an A, or a V. Some of the best advice I've gotten is head-hands-body. Where the eyes and head track, the hands and body follow. And we also do a drill where the goalie gets in stance at the top of the crease and the coach takes shots slightly to the left or slightly to the right, and your job is to track the puck and just side-step toward it. Not even shuffle - just step enough that it hits your glove, arm, blocker, etc. That's about moving your body to get in front of the shock, your body of course being a bigger target than your blocker, or what have you.

This was my first time in all my pads on the ice. I tried everything on at home, but pretty much was just standing in place. I wanted to do a public skate with my goalie skates before I geared up for a stick time but that didnt happen. We are doing a public session Sunday, so that will be more time in the skates. It did feel a bit awkward at first today, but only when skating and turning. The longer flat portiin of blade on the ice was certainly noticeable. I was just so relieved that I didnt experience any foot pain in the skates. I mades sure not to crank the laces down too hard and that worked out great. I was trying to do some basic goalie drills on my own, but without have someone there to watch and correct my technique, I kind of gave up on them. Also, it got kind of old just having people coming in an essentialy doing breakaway attempts on me. After awhile if they didnt shoot from the top of the circles I just let them do their thing and didnt flinch. I wanted to try to work on covering the posts and have people shoot from different angles, but that disnt really happen either. It was a fun first experience and I cant wait to get some instruction come Monday night.

I've taken to filling my (32oz) water bottle about a quarter to a third of the way with gatorade, and the rest with water. I sweat like a racehorse under my gear, so much more than as a player, and the extra bit helps. Especially in a half-ice game where you have like zero breaks for a drink. Personally I felt (in goalie skates) like I was almost impeded going down - like I was getting tripped up or had to do some kind of ballerina move to butterfly. How did it feel for you? Had you worn your pads at all before?

Hey guys, I'm JS, the skates product manager at CCM. I just wanted to address questions about fit differences on the CCM skates line that i saw in this thread. For those wondering if the new JetSpeed fit will be the same as the RBZ, i wanted to clarify that it will actually be very different. We now have 3 distinct fits for our 3 skates. Here's a quick synopsis: CCM JetSpeed: The JetSpeed is a first-of-its-kind fit for CCM skates. A lot of players had been asking us for a skate that wraps closely and comfortably around all the key areas of the foot (heel, ankle, and forefoot). That's how the JetSpeed was designed. Using our new skate building technology called RocketFrame, we were able to create a skate boot which is shaped ergonomically, with high definition curves that keeps the skate completely connected around the heel and ankle area to lock the foot comfortably in the skate. The angles that the RocketFrame Technology provides to the boot also allows the forefoot area of the skate to curve and wrap around closely to the top of the foot. The feedback on the JetSpeed has been fantastic. Many of our field testers have played with the skates right out of the box, no heat moulding. Others used head molding to micro customize the fit, to get it absolutely perfected. Everyone has been talking about the great heel lock from the deep pocket we have created in the skate. Overall, players can expect a closer, more contoured fit in the JetSpeed with a true high definition heel lock and a medium volume skate. CCM Ribcor 50K: This skate is built off mindset that players should be able to have a comfortable and customizable fit in a high performance skate. Ribcor 50K consists of a more flexible boot construction through the ribbed areas of the quarter package connecting the stiffer composite inserts. It's a skate meant to feel agile on the ice. The ComfortFrame technology used to build this skate consists of a dense EPP foam on the inside of the boot, which is very comfortable when pressed up against the forefoot. You'll feel it right out of the box. It allows the more narrow forefoot and sides of the skate to hug the inner and outer foot, with micro-customization that naturally forms the walls of the skate around the shape of the forefoot. The EPP foam is highly responsive and also allows a wider foot to fit in the skate, pushing the foam outward for players with a wider foot. Of course, the Pump allows players to fully customize fit of the back of the skate, most notably the heel lock. The Pump's bladder fills up the empty space between the heel bone and ankle bones until the player feels a perfected, personalized fit, with their foot locked in the skate. CCM Tacks The Tacks skate is our stiffest skate construction with a wider heel and forefoot. The best way to explain it is a more "traditional" CCM fit which our long time customers have been accustomed to. The skate's stiffer construction is meant for players who seek the ultimate in energy transfer and red-line acceleration. The carbon composite inserts at strategic areas in the skate help generate the speed and performance, which also means heat molding these skates is the best way to get that personalized, molded fit and wrap around the forefoot to make it a nice, comfortable skate. I hope this helps explain the different fit sensations that players will feel with each of our skates. We're extremely excited with our 2015 lineup!

In this day and age, I think we are using the term "journalists" rather loosely.

After getting rejected last week for a very promising banking position, I managed to secure an offer for the same position (albeit in a different subdivision) yesterday!!! Funny how life works sometimes. Bay Street, here I come!