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Got my custom QRL's in a little while ago. white graphics kovalchuk pro pattern grip and diamond texture

Picked these up from Hockey Monkey during their last sale. Could care less whether or not they are actually Sens "Pro Stock" they match my beer league jerseys perfectly!

Howdy, So, haven't done one of these in a while... The executive summary of my current issue with hockey is "Look, _then_ pass". My skills are still increasing, most notably I handle the puck better now than before. Shots are still pretty "meh". Getting better at receiving imperfect passes with my skates. Getting a little stronger in terms of skating. Etc. But my Achilles heel right now is that I'll get the puck / go get the puck and then make some stupid "pass to where I apparently think someone should be", without actually looking well. And of course, 95% of the time, that ends up being a turnover. Which sucks for everyone. So now, before I go out on a shift my mantra is going to be "Look, then pass". My son's hockey is going reasonably well. He's in a house league about 30 minutes away at another rink (the local rink only has travel hockey and they didn't have room for a goalie. The house league seems a little better in intensity as well. I'm helping coach. That's been going ok. The head coach is a good guy and I think I've been helping. My son has been having fun too, it seems like. He doesn't like it as much as soccer, but he still says he has fun. Lately he's been wanting to skate out vs. being in goal, but this week he'll be back to getting into the net. He may have his first game every next weekend if it gets put together and he'll be in goal. That could be interesting. Hopefully he'll have fun with it. The house league itself has been interesting due to the mix of players. Being a house league, the ages are way more mixed than normal kid hockey... There are four or so Squirts (10 and under), 5 or 6 PeeWees (12 and under), and 5 or 6 Bantams (14 and under). I think I've got those names right btw. USA Hockey smartly is going to names like 10U, 12U, 14U, etc. to account for this "WTF? I haven't been doing this for 100 years" issue, but its not there yet. Anyway, before the first practice I'm standing there with my son (in his goalie stuff) getting ready to head out on the ice with the rest of the kids and one of the older kids is standing next to me. And he's my height, with a stick as tall as the one I use. And I realize that this kid with the same leverage as me is going to possibly be shooting pucks at my 9 year old and I'm like "Uh.... I'm not so sure about this!" :-) Luckily, being a house league none of these kids really seem able to fire rockets. Probably I shouldn't have worried though... Yesterday at a local practice with him I ended up glancing a shot off his head. :-) He was fine. Mostly just surprised both of us, no damage. Equipment wise for me, coming up on a year doing this I think the biggest surprise is just how consumable stuff is. My gloves are starting to get holes in the palm of my top hand. The skates I used since Jan of last year until just recently were wore holes into the top of the inside liner. The stick I've liked the best for the last while I noticed today has the toe split. Etc. Couple that with me getting used to what I like and I don't think I'm still using _any_ equipment I started with. My next piece of equipment is going to be contact lenses. Playing with glasses sucks. And contacts are essentially free with vision insurance, vs. surgery which is like $3.5k or whatever. So, going to try contacts when I'm playing hockey. Not expecting them to work well with computer screens (I tried this once before like 20+ years ago) due to my astigmatism, but we'll see. Anyway, turns out vision matters and blurred vision due to sweat on glasses / glasses falling down your head inside your helmet is not a benefit. Anyway, that's way long enough. So yeah... Still hockey-ing. Mark

Sweet. I'm poor and boring so I've only got a QRL3 in a W88. Freaking awesome stick though. Digging the white graphics.

These are probably my favorite gloves of all time, the "white dip" fingers are just perfect...

^^ All because of these two crazies ^^ Model: Stealth CX Size: 14” Foam: EVA Dual Density PE insert: 1.5 mm (Standard) Thumb: Flex Palm: Micro Nash Grey 0.8 mm Gusset: Poly Knit Black (Stretch) Palm fit: Standard Finger length: Standard Gusset height: -1/4" Cuff length: Standard I didn't want to play too much with the fit given how much I liked the fit of the retail Stealths though I did opt for shorter gussets; a wise decision in retrospect. What I really wanted was to have the colorway echo that of the Easton Air GX9500 gloves that the Calgary Flames wore in the 1994 season. Gary Suter and German Titov (below) are the only wearers to my knowledge. Here's the mock up: ... and finally the end result, which was better than I dared hope for. Huge, HUGE thank you to Jesse, Easton, and everyone else who made this possible. I've wanted customs like these for so long and to be able to get to make a pair just the way I wanted them was a dream come true.