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The silver Easton 110 flex Aluminum shaft I tried to use when I was 13. That thing would be too stiff for me now; it was crazy stiff at that age. I also had a 100 flex gold Easton; it wasn't quite as bad, but still too stiff. I knew nothing about flex, skate hollows and all the great things I learned from this site at that time. I did stumble upon some sticks and shafts with more appropriate flex ratings, but that was basically because they were on sale and I got lucky and not because I knew what I needed. Also, the Nike 004 helmet. It looked great, but was too narrow for me at the temples and gave me headaches. I moved on to helmets that aren't really known for their style, but fit me comfortably.

I was going to mention the Easton aluminum shaft sticks. Mine lasted half a game before the shaft kinked/bent in the middle when taking a slap shot from the top of the left circle.

I'm coming into this discussion late, but maybe I can offer an opinion based on my own experiences in hockey for the last 25 years. What you described in the first post seems to fit me well. I've always had decent skill in hockey, but it really only comes out in low-pressure situations (drop-in games with buddies) or practices. Now approaching 40 in men's league, I still suffer from the same issues I had when I was playing in high school. In a game situation I panic with the puck and play the entire time with tense muscles. I can be firing great shots in warm ups, making escape maneuvers in the corner, stickhandling through a bunch of pucks, but when pressure is on I fall apart. For me it all comes down to anxiety. I'm afraid of looking stupid. I mentally feel like I'm inadequate, so it forces me to be inadequate. I can be coming down on a 1 v 1 with a mediocre defender on the other team, and I get so much in my own head about what move to make, I fail to really make any move, then lose the puck. As a defender, I can move laterally on the blue line with the puck great in warmup. In a game, I flub the puck just seeing someone coming my way, and then it's a 2 v 1 or breakaway the other direction. Somehow you need to help this player overcome his anxiety and fear of screwing up in front of others. I have a strong feeling that is what this is. It's hard to identify because the player doesn't want to admit to the anxiety. It's taken me 25-plus years to finally admit my anxiety and work to overcome it. Which isn't easy to do when you're about to turn 40 and play against a bunch of 20-somethings.

Yeah, and for the most part, they are using the most minimalistic versions of their logo. It's fine honestly, and if it increases revenue for the lower income teams that's cool too.

Why's that? A huge selling point of the Sparx is it's ability to maintain profile throughout the life of the steel.

Helmet stickers aren't crazy so far. I would be bothered with a forehead sticker like they do in Europe.

Well, I thought I knew what light was...

Just to follow up, I went with a sherwood Code V girdle, the thigh pads are adjustable by up to 5" .

on the forehand, yes. on the backhand, less so

Absolutely. I've already spilled the beans on that somewhat, and just realized that way of putting it after reading @Cavs019 description of his experiences with it as well as recalling what others have said about it, but I'll try to clarify it here. Background: The P28 is a subtle curve, without even going into the depths of its half dozen relatively common variations: E28 and BC28 are kinkier than Bauer, CCM, or Warrior's P28, while True's TC4 is more of a cousin to those curves than a sibling...then of course, there's MAX variants that were starting to come out before Covid19 and the popular Fisher Pro used by Kucherov, Karlsson, maybe even Ekman-Larsson, among many others. It was introduced with a nod at this subtlety, the infamous "dual-lie" marketing campaign, which ended up being more of a tease than a fair representation of the blade's character. What is all this subtlety then? Dual-lie is definitely one aspect, and potentially the trickiest. But it's also dual-curve. It's not a toe curve, but a heel curve with a toe curve added to it, and it can play like that: it can be a toe curve with the puck at the far end of the blade, or it can be a heel curve if you play as though the "dual" portion of the blade didn't exist. That is, you use it as a short blade with a heel curve and leave the toe curve and its sharp rocker out of the equation. Practically speaking... All this means is, for pick and fling wrist shots, push the puck out to the toe, grab and release in one direct motion. But note! Here the inverse of the key to using it as a heel curve is true: to use it as a toe curve, ignore the heel curve portion of the blade, or about 2/3 of the surface you've got for handling the puck. When it came time for me to try this out with the Leino the first time I used it, it felt really odd. I didn't know at all how to shoot at this point, mind you. But I had started seeing tips on how to do it on YouTube, so I figured I'd give it a go. It just felt strange to have the puck dangling out there at the end of this crazy long blade, ready to launch. It also looked strange, seeing all that blade I was bypassing, setting the puck up out as far as it could go. But then I launched my first shot and it went exactly where I had hoped it would. I wasn't used to my aim being any good, so I got giddy. But there's the rub-- It can be too good to be true, and in my experience, it was for a good while. I could shoot off the toe and skate with the puck, but I couldn't really manipulate the puck reliably to evade defenders in tight space or make consistent passes. After giving it some more time, I got the stick balanced better for my hands' feeling-expectations and discovered the gotcha about not releasing the puck from its natural heel-to-toe launch zone, but instead go heel-to-mid and suddenly I had the best of both worlds: the effortless saucers of a heel curve and the effortless lasers of a rockered toe curve. It took me an excess of 15-20 sessions with the stick to figure it out, but eventually it clicked. And then when I tried these techniques out on an E28, it was pretty much the same, just on a shorter blade at a slightly higher lie. Bananas split ~ Unfortunately, it doesn't work for everyone, and the point of all of this gets at why I think that is: it's hard managing a split personality, and the P28 is a split personality blade. The split personality requires awareness at all times, or you risk flubbing your maneuver entirely. The classic way to do this is to feel the puck on your stick without looking at it. If you can feel where it is on your stick, you can get it to the zone it needs to be in regardless of whether the heel approach or the toe approach is preferred in a given situation. You can also look at the puck, but it limits your effectiveness and it can get you into trouble really fast. If your feeling for the puck isn't as detailed as where it is currently and where it needs to be for the next action, you can easily get frustrated with the duality coming back to bite you. It's not all fun and games. Unless you like managing split personalities 🙂 Post mortem. Not that the P28 is dead. By all means, it looks as though it is here to stay for the next while, it's just not the latest and greatest anymore. When it came out, it seemed to create such a sensation, in part, I think because it seemed too pro to be readily available to mortals. That was my impression at least. Then the feedback and reviews came rolling in, and they were quite mixed. Where there had been so much marketing about a blade pattern(!) that promised to make you shoot like Ovechkin, people seemed to be somewhat caught off guard by the blade not always behaving. Easton hadn't told the whole story, and I keep coming across frustrated people who seem to have half of the information, in no small part due to the (at most) half of the story Easton told when they unleashed the E28. ! When was the last time that happened? It seemed totally crazy at the time, but that campaign looks like it set the stage for the marketing of the other blades that have come and gone (P46, P30) or are just having their moment as the IT blades right now (All MAX Everything, P90T+/-). That's all I have to say about that.

I'll leave the Lieberman reference alone.... 😉 That's a huge can of worms. Regardless, I really don't think instrumented treadmills are necessary to get to the answer and in fact, would be more challenging to get a satisfactory answer than some simpler alternatives. As I say, I know quite a lot of elite players and can deduct broad principles from that data I have. Alternatively, some simple, well conducted on-ice testing could get to the answer as well. As I alluded to earlier in the thread, we were going to do some of it with my son after making the changes, but he's absolutely convinced in the set up he wants now and any amount of testing I do won't make a bit of difference. That's another thing about hockey, the mental piece is huge and if you make a change that the athlete perceives reduces performance, it will affect confidence to the point that it will likely reduce performance regardless. A self-fulfilling prophecy or a negative placebo effect if you will. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. We've gotten far enough off of the topic, we probably should leave it at this point.

RIP screech