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Drop in with the new pads was phenomenal. I ended up being with the normal drop in group which had a total of 3 goalies for about 15 minutes when another group came over and asked if one of us would like to head over to the rink they were on. I headed over to find out that I was going to be the only goalie over there. All the extra ice time was nice but I was starting to feel it after the first 15 minutes with that group. Ended up switching nets every 15 minutes and had a whole 45 minutes in net. The pads themselves were awesome. I could easily kick the rebounds into the corners and the 5 hole wasn't a problem at all. One puck ended up squeezing through after I had stopped it but that was just because I wasn't expecting someone to come whacking at me for a rebound. Had a few go in that I probably should have stopped but I was pretty pleased considering it was only my third time in net and I was adjusting to new pads. Stopped a few break aways and I was really surprised on the one save. Their winger came into the zone all alone and got me to go down. I stuck out my leg just hoping that I would get a piece of it and I ended up getting every bit of it! Hopefully this next weekend I'll get another chance to play in net with my actual team. I'm not the full time goalie but we do have one early game out of the two this weekend, so I'll just have to wait and see if our goalie can get out of work on time to get to the rink.

https://imgur.com/a/JqZsS

My latest eBay snipe

A few surprises: one, we got to play on the big rink today (the two rinks are side by side, and the smaller has been converted now to turf for the summer) - and got extra time as well, so couple of hours instead of just one. Didn't feel too badly by the end, surprisingly. Was getting a bit slower in reaction time. Adjusted well to the angles and tracking the puck. I had bought a second pair of "backup" glasses (now primary) and paid extra for super-thin fancy polycarbonate lenses and feel much less "lopsided" off the ice, and it's been easier to adjust to being without them now that the prescription is accurate and I don't have a coke bottle on one eye. Anyway - there was the big rink, and I tried out my new jersey and was not struck down by the hockey gods for hubris. I also found after last Saturday night a nick on the landing gear (inside fabric, not the outer leather) of my right pad, which is perplexing, because I wouldn't have stepped on my own pads, and the angle is wrong for anyone stepping on them on ice, but it looks as if they were sliced by a skate. Maybe someone stepped on them while I was dressing? It doesn't affect the play at all, and the rigid internal material is fine, but I should probably sew it back up. I had to get my skates sharpened on Tuesday, after going to stick-and-puck and realizing oh man, these are absolutely shot after Saturday night. Could not for the life of me recall what hollow it was - the sharpener looked at it and said usually goalies get 5/8", but said that these looked like they'd been done at 3/4". I went with 3/4" and it worked just fine today. I think I'm just still heavy enough that a shallower hollow isn't a problem. All in all a pretty solid game - I had a shutout going for like 45 minutes, while my poor colleague across the ice got smoked, but it evened out after the first hour. I felt comfortable and moved well. Butterfly slides are slowly improving and becoming a reasonable part of the repertoire.

Here they are! I'm not quite sure how they got white/black/black because they look like the white/white/black to me but they still look awesome and I'm happy with them. I added the rest of my gear into the pick too. My blocker is a Reebok 28 and the glove is a CCM extreme flex 400. The helmet is a bauer 940 custom painted to look like Fleury's from the stadium series a few years ago. I can already tell I'm probably going to be taking the thigh risers off of the pad just because they like to get caught on my pants but everything else works awesome!