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I'll admit to NEVER even thinking about what brand a puck is, so what makes some better than others? Serious question. Better flavor? Dave

What’s the incentive from other brands to not give permission to post catalogues? Seems like free advertising.

Does anybody know where to order Sher-wood/InGlasCo 960 or 965 Canadian pucks? I can find the Slovakian ones all over the place.

Silly, IMO. But it is what it is.

Most likely the issues isn't "not wanting to give permission" but "not managing to give permission". The bigger companies get, the more bureaucracy builds up, and suddenly for something as simple as uploading a PDF that they probably even themselves provide either online or in print requires input from Legal, Marketing, R&D, etc etc etc - just one person to drop a ball there and nothing gets done at all.

I provided my LHS with my email address for the order. I believe I actually entered it myself directly into the tablet that was used to take my scan. Later that same day I received an email from True which provided a link to my order status.

JR owns Modsquad, managed a Total Hockey store and worked in the hockey industry for years before that, including a stint in the equipment department for the Tampa Bay lightning. I believe he also played inline in college. So your skates would be in excellent, very knowledgeable hands if you send them to JR.

I have the digital 2019 catalog if you need it.

Howdy, So, got back out again this morning. This time with the guy that offered to coach me some. It was definitely nice working with him. On positioning, one thing he said really helped me... Basically that I should be thinking like I'm a 3rd, really conservative, defenseman (2 ref system, btw). So I'm down at home base, then as the play transitions out of the zone, I follow the play up, staying even / slightly behind the defensive players. As we get into the offensive zone, then I stay on the neutral zone size of the line and wait for play to transition the other way. When it does, I try and stay even or slightly behind the defenseman again until I'm back down at home base. It's not exactly that simple (I assume) since I may need to call zone exits in the offensive zone and zone entries into the defensive zone, but the concept helped me for sure. Also worked on just dropping the puck. I probably spent five minutes throwing pucks at the ice after the game and just that extra bit of practice helped. I think as part of my warmup routine when I'm reffing I'm going to drop a few pucks just to try and get into that same groove. Worked on signals some as well. The guy helping me is pretty particular on signals that aren't lazy or "happy" / "excited". I would say that when I play games I don't see refs that are that diligent about them, but its still good for me to learn. Anyway... It was a good morning. 🙂 I feel like I'm slowly learning some stuff and working on building my skill set. Hopefully as I get better I won't need to think so consciously about some of this stuff. 🙂 Mark

Definitely interested! My wife loves Chicago so she’d even go with me this time!

Me and the ‘Ol Man are in. 😉

Howdy, First time out last night. I didn't get into any fist fights and nobody called me a motherf*cker, so that's a good first outing, right? 🙂 The guy who's showing me the ropes / runs the league actually couldn't be there, so I was reffing with another guy. Felt bad for him that he was working with a rank newbie, but he seemed ok with it in general and helped me out with advise. My overall impression is that there's just so much other shit to think about / be ready for! As a player, I don't watch other players for anything beyond "which way will the play go". Obviously that isn't the case as a ref, and that's weird to get used to / change my natural reactions. Offsides calls were pretty easy... I play wing a lot so I'm used to watching other players to see if its ok to go or not. I had to get used to signalling a good zone entry every time to tell my partner it was ok though. I also struggled a little with situations where the puck exited the zone, was regained by the attacking team, but they still had players in the offensive zone. At times I was signaling a delayed offsides before the puck actually went back into the offensive zone and I'm almost 100% sure that's wrong. I also would verbally say "get out! get out!" when that happened, which I think is probably ok, in a beginner league especially? I sucked with initiating icing calls... When I was the deep ref (I don't know the right words... I mean the ref down at "home base" or whatever its called in the zone, vs. the "high" ref at the blue line) I frequently forgot to evaluate if the defending team shot the puck out of the zone. I think maybe I was only 50/50 at best on that? The league uses blue line icing, which I think actually hurts me with this, just because it happens more rarely. I need to get better here. As the high ref, it was fine. More time to evaluate and again, I'm often playing wing so I'm more used to evaluating that. Actually, in terms of hand signals I just sorta sucked in general. When the goalie would cover the puck I would blow the whistle and point at them... That's certainly wrong. And when I thought about it, I knew it was wrong, but wasn't sure what the actual signal should be... I'll need to review that. I imagine its either a wave off signal or just a point to the appropriate face off dot? I also initially wasn't waving off good zone entries every time, but my partner mentioned that to me between periods and I started doing it. Positioning-wise, I got a little better as the game went on, but for sure an area for me to work on. I'd read the above manual, but reading a diagram and saying "oh, of course" and doing it in practice in response to situations are two different things of course. When I was the high ref I would frequently get "caught" watching zone exits, vs. getting moving and staying ahead of the play so that I could judge the opposite zone entry and then get to my position as the "deep" ref. Even when I got moving early and judged the zone entry when play reversed, I would sometimes then not keep moving and get down to the deep / home base position. I also need to practice faceoffs. I didn't realize I needed to blow the whistle before I dropped the puck, but that was easily corrected by the other ref. The actual face off itself... I think I had maybe one puck land flat out of the five to ten I dropped? Horrible. Who knew dropping a damn puck would be hard? Counting players is also weird. Again, something I never worry about as a player. Almost made myself look like an idiot at the end of the game when the team that was down by one had 6 skaters on the ice... I realized the goalie had been pulled as I was about to say something. 🙂 Still, cost the team down by a goal a couple seconds while I held the puck on a face off figuring that out. Anyway, that's way too long already. 🙂 It was challenging and now I want to ref a bunch of games to get better at it. Its going to be slower going though, since I'm just doing it for my wife's beginner games. Even if I could, I don't think I'd be comfortable at this point with more serious games where I didn't already know a lot of the people. Got some positioning videos and hand signals to brush up on! Mark