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End of season VH skate update: My son has now used his VH skates for two half seasons of hockey here in New England, fall half season and high school. He has about 50 games of use along with approximately 75-100 practices. If you read the original posts, he has several issues including pronating and flat feet. So how have the skates held up? In a word: Excellent with one exception. My son is a now 18 year old, 185 pound defenseman. Been playing since the age of 5. The skates continue to be very comfortable for him. He states that they still have "no lag" from movement to action, do not hurt his feet in any area and feel as good now as when he first got them. No arch problems, no instep issues from the pronate padding and no lace bite. Watching him play I see the skates are still lined up properly from the knee down to the blade holder with the blade sitting properly on the ice. I was concerned that his pronate issue would eventually wear down the padding on the inside of his right skate and he would again have the pronate issue of only skating on his inner edge, but that has not happened. The one exception I mentioned above is that one of the copper rivets for the tendon guard popped off after a practice and we scrambled to get a new one re-installed prior to his game the next day. The second replacement rivet popped off a few days later so I found a small, black screw and sleeved nut setup, similar to what holds cobra holders on Graf skates, and used that to re-install the tendon guard. Has not come loose since. I contacted VH and they sent me out new inner padding that covered the rivet head which I glued in and problem solved. Interestingly only one tendon guard rivet came lose. The other is still holding strong. The best thing of all in this is his improvement in skating. Neither of us knew how much the pronating was affecting his skating until we got skates that corrected it. Forward, backward, initial acceleration, cornering all improved. All that brought his game up a notch which helps me to justify the additional expense of custom skates. Plus going from Graf 703's to VH, we saved some weight too. My conclusion is that these are great, custom made skates that can help players play better if they have fit issues. I can't comment on skaters that have skates that already work for them now but certainly if you have fit issues, these skates should help you. If you are a serious player, these are well worth the money.

People dredging up old threads just looking for an argument.

I just keep boxes from purchases. Also, you could fashion one out of a normal box. Also, you could just wrap stick in thin bubble wrap and then use a trash bag and packing tape to protect stick.