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I'm so close I can feel it... Hoping to try skating next weekend. Just a public skate, since I'm still not allowed to play hockey because of the blood thinners no matter how good my ankle feels. But just a couple laps would make me SO happy right about now. Also I got a message from Passau saying my new pads should be on their way late this week or early next week. Woooo!!!

10 weeks since the break. The last two weeks haven't been easy but definitely saw improvement. My first thought when he said I had to walk on my ankle was "no way. There is NO way that's going to be possible..." But I hobbled around, with a cane for support, for the first week of work without my iWalk. It got better and better every day. By the time I hit Sunday, I was walking without the cane, and without pain. However, I think I ended up over-doing it and had a lot of pain in my heel all this week. Not in the ankle at all, but right in my heel. A friend of mine (in his final year to become a physical therapist) said it was likely a mild case of plantar fasciitis. He suggested I do the "scrunch up a towel with your toes" exercise. I told him that was in the list the doctors gave me but I didn't feel like I had any loss of range of motion in my toes so I skipped it. Apparently the doctors knew what they were talking about... go figure. Maybe it's just me who has this issue, but it seems like if the doctors would just explain something instead of just saying to do it, I'd have an easier time with all of this. If the first doctor had said "you need to walk on it because you need stress on it for the bone to fuse" would have gone a long way. If the instructions would say "this is for strengthening the plantar fascia and not actually anything to do with your toes", that would have been helpful. Shrug. Anyway, the doc a few weeks back said he wanted me out of the boot and in a shoe with the ankle brace a week before I came back. That's today. So, I hobbled off to work with my shoe and brace, with my cane (again mostly just for balance, and a tiny bit of support until I get comfortable). Surprisingly, it's significantly less painful all around to be walking on a shoe. I'm guessing because my ankle and toes are able to flex through the step instead of being immobile. I imagine I'm going to need my ice pack tonight, though. (I have one of those WONDERFUL shock doctor ankle ice packs I got way back in the day when my old goalie skates would hurt my inner ankle. It has gel ice packs that go on both sides of the foot, as well as the top of the foot. It's AMAZING. Highly recommended!) Anyway... the end is near(ish)!

Elvis Stojko now in VH skates!

Hey Guys and Gals - Russ here from Sparx. I thought I would check in to MSH tonight to see if anyone had questions about Sparx. I can address some of the wheel life questions raised above and also provide an update on the feedback we are getting. Hopefully you're cool with me chiming in. I figured it's best to hear it from the source. First, on wheel life. Each Sparx grinding ring has a useful life of 40 skate sharpenings (pairs of skates). One sharpening is two skates at 4 cycles (1 cycle = down and back across blade) per skate or 8 cycles total per pair. 8 cycles * 40 pair = 320 cycles per grinding ring. This is how long the abrasive lasts on the ring. The Sparx Sharpener has a "grinding ring life" display on the top of the unit which has 10 segments. Each segment represents 10% of the life of a wheel or 4 pairs of skates to be sharpened. 10 segments * 4 pair per segment = 40 pairs of skates (4 cycles per skate, 8 cycles per pair) Kgbeast asked about blade length - this doesn't play into the life calculation. Each ring sharpens 40 pairs of skates (320 cycles) regardless of skate size. Users can adjust how many cycles will be run on their skates. We set the default to 4 cycles because that's what we found worked best for people skating a few times in between sharpenings. As a side note - Sparx removes the same amount of material per pass that an average human sharpener does (we figured this out experimentally and then designed Sparx to mimic that removal rate). Sparx also provides constant pressure everywhere along the skate blade length so your blade rocker/radius never changes. With Sparx you'll never get the banana effect at the heel and toe. One of the greatest benefits of Sparx is that your sharpening behavior changes from a repair mentality to a preparation mentality. Many people who own Sparx now sharpen their skates every 1 to 2 times they skate. Across my whole playing career I always felt super confident on my skates right after I got my skates sharpened and then my performance and confidence would degrade until I finally broke down and went to get them sharpened again (up and down throughout the whole season). You'll never experience that behavior again once you have Sparx. With Sparx it's so easy to keep your skates in perfect condition at all times and it only takes 3 - 5 minutes to touch up your skates before every game or practice. Once you get in the habit of sharpening more frequently you can experiment by dropping your cycles down to 3 per skate and this will extend the life of your grinding wheel by 25% (or 50 pair of skates per grinding ring). If on the other hand you get a massive ding in your blade you may need to try more cycles to get it out and that will speed up the ring usage. We do sell a cross grinding ring for the deep nicks and dings... check out our site for that. We recommend this for shops or folks that routinely get huge gouges in their blades. Again, once you change your sharpening behavior you'll get these massive dings a lot less often. The other question asked was about changing from one ROH to another or from FIRE to ROH or back. I find that the normal 4 cycles seems to work for me when switching between hollows (e.g. 1/2" to 5/8"). One way to know for sure is to put black marker (I use a sharpie) on the surface of the blade in a few spots and try it for four cycles and confirm that the marker is removed. If the mark is still there, try another cycle or two and you'll be all set. Sparx is super easy to switch between ROH and FIRE (flat bottom) and experiment to find the hollow that suits your playing style best. Almost everyone at Sparx is skating on something different after experimenting with various hollows. This goes to show you that most people, even our in-house Olympian, will find experimenting to be quite valuable. I thought you guys might enjoy an update on Sparx in general. We now have 100's of Sparx machines out in homes, teams, and pro shops in N. America. We have been most surprised by the pro shop adoption. Our commercial users see the operational benefits of Sparx and the value this product brings to their customers by providing them with a consistent sharpening and with quick turn-around. If you're not in the market for Sparx keep your eyes out for a shop near you using Sparx. If you are in the market for your own machine (convenience is king) we're nearly out of backorder. In the next month or so customers will be able to order Sparx and have it ship same day. We are still accepting pre-orders (no charge until we ship) so if you want Sparx for the start of this season you should buy it now as we are getting new pre-orders every day. We also recently met with many NHL/AHL/and college teams at the annual meeting of pro equipment managers in Nashville. At this meeting we were grilled by some of the most particular skate sharpeners in the world and we impressed the heck out of these guys. One such EM from a pacific northwest NHL team spent over an hour interrogating me and the machine. He evaluated surface finish, edge height evenness, edge smoothness, ability to handle bent blades, ease of alignment, and on and on. We survived and he is one of the first NHL EM's that will be trialing Sparx coming up in the next few weeks. In total we have around 2 dozen such trials pending and our fingers are crossed that we'll get the green light for some to use Sparx in the regular season. Here's a link to the talk I gave at the conference for anyone interested in hearing me talk even more about Sparx: https://www.facebook.com/sparxhockey/videos/1053048344780569/ Hopefully these answers and the update helps people out. We are here for you guys anytime you need us at help@sparxhockey.com. Enjoy the rest of your summer, Russ Layton CEO/Founder, Sparx Hockey

I have put in 12 orders in the last 10 days you may want to get it in quick Pro guys from Euro's to NHL are ordering in record numbers. Fitted another HHOF player on Saturday that's 3 now. Lots of NCAA and so on in them as well. They really are taking off! Won't be long though and Bauer and CCM will bring out something to compare. Prety sure VH has a couple tricks coming that will help keep them ahead...in the fit area!

I hope this is true. ATTENTION: GRAF Hockey was licensed to produce skates in Canada and is currently in receivership being run by a bank until new financing and management is found. www.grafskates.ch is fine and healthy and making #icehockey and #figureskates in KREUZLINGEN, Switzerland. During this time we are now ordering our stock Graf hockey skates and figure boots directly from Switerland. The Graf brand is a global business that is healthy and the Graf family is in the process of bringing back the Graf brand back to NA. Any questions related to the Graf Brand or the availability of any Graf skates, please email us at info@westsideskate.com.