Leaderboard

Easton CNT Stealth 85 Drury or Sakic. Nothing has ever come close for me. I still have dreams of randomly coming across a storage bin in Mexico or Salt Lake stocked with 40 of them. Until then - if anyone has one shoot me a PM. 😆

Older: 100 flex ultra lite (butterscotch) with ccm wood ronald petrovicky pro blades. I don't quite remember how i acquired the blades, but i had 6 of them. They were short, skinny with a toe kink. The stiffest wood blades i had ever felt. Grey 85 z bubble with a sakic focus flex blade was a game changer for me. I couldn't believe how light it was. I had an original synergy (the dark grey) at the same time, and I much preferred the bubble. I also had eagle gloves in the heatley design, but instead of blue with a yellow strip, they were black with a white stripe. I believe they originally had floating wrist protection which i cut it off. They were a real statement piece haha. Newer: True skates. They feel like no other skate I've worn. It's like skating in a sorel winter boot but in the best possible way. I've had life changing ankle injuries, and these have made skating way more enjoyable and sustainable. Previously, I had to tightly tape my ankle before every skate in bauers. I didn't think i'd be able to play much longer at one point. With my true customs, i dont have to tape, and i aggravate my ankles way less frequently than i did before. They're tough to get on and off your feet, but worth it. Easton v9 and bauer nexus 1n are my two favourite sticks of semi-recent years. They felt different from another, but both were really balanced and not overly light or hollow. For some reason, I switched from kreps to p90t, and now my stick options are way less diverse. Dumb. I'd really like to use those sticks again. Is it just me, or do many of the really recent, mega light sticks feel like kid's toys? For protective, I'll echo others and say the ccm CL pads. And of course my bauer 4500. I think if they stopped making them, i'd stop playing. But hey, I dont think i've ever tried on another helmet, so maybe they aren't as great as i think.

Very interesting conversation, but I disagree with the "linear crossover for speed" stuff that I've been reading all over the place. Players like McDavid and MacKinnon do not crossover to build maximum speed, they do it to change attack angles and create space. Go watch either one of them in a fastest skater competition and see how many times they crossover on the straightaway, (hint, the answer is zero). If they were using those crossovers intentionally to create speed, wouldn't it make sense that they would do it when they are trying to go as fast as they possibly can in a race?

Thousands of coaches have spent their entire lives teaching skating without understanding what really differentiates good skating form from poor skating form. You can see a lot of folks are very passionate about the subject, but the amount of alignment in their beliefs is all over the map. Be wary of the anyone that thinks they have it all figured out. Anyone that claims that most certainly knows far less than they realize. Hell, NHL teams even in recent years have had power skating coaches like Laura Stamm teaching players to swing their arms front to back instead of side to side. Mike Bracko has disproved this and taught the side to side arm swing. Anyone talking about knee bend really means hip hinge. If you try to bend your knees without developing the ability to comfortably hinge your hip, you're going to have a bad time. But look at McDavid, the undisputed skating king of the NHL. No one puts fear into opposing D like McDavid. Does it look like he has a deep hip hinge / knee bend and long stride like Taylor Hall? No, not at all. Does he blow past players like they are standing still? Yes. So what's his magic? It's certainly in his linear crossovers and the power he's generating below the knee. His strength to mass ratio and the power he generates on his cross overs puts him in another league altogether. It'll be decades before most traditional power skating coaches catch up to teaching the technique McDavid is using vs. the old school Laura Stamm train of thought. I don't mean to pick on Laura, but her videos are on youtube and show what most traditional 'power skating' coaches have believed for years. I can't comment on ankle strength but ankle mobility is 100% important. People make fun of 'ankle benders', but elite skaters can (in a controllable way) pronate their ankles to achieve more power in their stride. Look up Jason Yee's videos on McDavid's and MacKinnon's stride analysis and watch what their feet and ankles are doing as they accelerate. Also look up Cal Dietz's work on ankle mobility and strength training, he's got videos on youtube. This is a very deep topic. Anyone who claims to know it all is surely wrong. If they were right, they'd have produced piles of players that skate like McDavid. But that hasn't happened. Players can become better skaters. But I'd argue most of what they need to do to get there starts off ice with mobility and speed work.

Different graphics!!! But yea probably tweaked the fit ever so slightly, changed some random material in a place or two, the curves in the 'airflow' or vents was altered by a degree...honestly at this point what can they really improve on?

Easton ultra Lite graphite

According to reddit and sports2k those are just placeholders in the catalog and NOT what they're actually going to look like so don't get too excited lol.

Very tough question. I'll have to go with a Jofa 381 cage, which I still use twice a week. I have a little mini collection of those paired with CCM HT2/652 helmets.

New Mission headquarters?

I agree. I like what Jason is doing as a young enthusiastic guy in this area, and I think if he keeps at it he'll refine his work into something a bit easier to digest. But I reference him mostly for his video, mostly because he pulls out and shows in slow motion the sequences that allow me to see and understand a bit better the mechanics being used by the best like McDavid, MacKinnon and Barzal. It can be learned later in life too I think, look at that recent goal by Leon Draisaitl vs. the Jets. He circles the net with some traditional crossovers to build speed, then does some linear crossovers to blow past Lowry and create separation to receive a pass and score on a nice finish. Just 2 season ago we didn't see this type of speed from Draisaitl, in fact at times he looked a bit slow and was accused of being lazy. Moreso probably because a lot of the big bodied guys have that slower looking type of mechanics in their skating. But there's no denying the effectiveness of this technique being applied in this case: https://twitter.com/TopherScott_/status/1362374406261985283?s=20

@YesLanges no, I really don't think I have it mixed up. I agree mostly with what you're saying, yet you seem fixated on a notion that I am talking about maximal strength or force exertion, whereas I have prefaced that the definition of strength is a function of motor control, recruitment and activation. I'll bow out of the discussion now because I don't think my definition will fit with your view, which is fine, but it really isn't going anywhere useful for the OP or anyone who is reading this and wants to improve. Great discussion though! @colins 100% agreed, many differing beliefs which has led to many differing skating styles. I never understood the front-to-back swing that Laura Stamm (and many coaches) taught either because it never made sense from a biomechanical point of view. While front-to-back pumping of the arms made sense for runners whose feet moved in the sagittal plane, skaters' feet moved more in the frontal plane, so the arms should as well. I also don't teach the toe flick that Hall or Eichel does, simply because having a toe flick really extends the cycle of a stride and in the game today, the quick feet and resulting agility seem to be more important. Toe flickers also tend to kick more posteriorly as well, while I teach a more lateral stride (beyond the initial acceleration). The notion of pronation in skating allowing a more powerful stride is correct in my understanding and experience. Coming from a speedskating background, it always made sense because it allows one to dig in better and to push more laterally as well. The increase in mobility as allowed by the loosening of the skating boot (or lowering of the boot cut) also allows skaters to manipulate their edges for increased control. The lowered boot cut was the basis of the Mako skate, if I recall, because more Cruikshank and Van Horne were speedskaters. Jason Yee's videos have great information but are too complicated for the regular skater to figure out I think, which fails to be helpful unfortunately.

Ankle strength?

Wear the 290's in goal. (Wear the Jofa 390's with a different cage when playing out).

Player that used to play on the group I was playing with and now plays with my dad's group wears this:

My Al MacInnis Sherwood Featherlite 7000 that stick was the best while it lasted. Been searching for the curve and feel since.

I dig these!

The toe caps look very different actually and much lower, which is a big improvement in terms of power. The old ones had a very tall toe box. Otherwise yeah, looks pretty much like the day, nls, fz etc

Give me a pair of nylon TF1000 with upgraded padding from today's gloves and split fingers and I'd be a happy camper!

Seeing that these are based on the bauer supreme last, you'd hope to see some features or stuff from the ultrasonic line trickle into these.

Maybe, just so that side would be symmetrical with the other non-damaged side. I don't know what it does, protection-wise, since it's really light-weight foam.

1- Dunno what the point is, you need to apply force in a coordinated manner, my point didn’t say you need some high level of maximum strength 2- I didn’t say anything about conscious or unconscious, many things are learned consciously and then become unconscious. My point was that ankle control isn’t the sole contributor to balance in a system that has multiple pivot points. That isn’t specific to skating.

CCM CL shoulder pads. Top notch protection and you forget you have them on.

CCM 752 Kevlar Tacks and Graf 703s

I love my True skates so much that I'm saving up now for a backup set next year.