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Hey guys! Long time lurker, first time poster 🙂 I work for STX and manage their Ice Hockey division. Hills over here has been an integral part in providing us with feedback on an initial prototype that we sent him. To answer some of your questions... Fit: The Halo glove (pictured), will be tight to hand, similar to the Surgeon line. We can't have these be loose fitting, otherwise the purpose will essentially be defeated. Protection: We would not be pursuing this product if protection wasn't a first thought. As someone pointed, we took inspiration from our RZR lacrosse glove. We beefed it up, and have put the gloves through industry standard protection testing. The gloves have passed with flying colors. We also have prototypes out in the marketing with elite youth and junior players. Release date: TBD... most likely May/June HPR2 Pro gloves: Improved four roll glove based off the HPR2. Releasing this Friday. I like to talk gear. Email me at ericb@stx.com if you'd like to shoot the shit.

If you look at the IG teasers the HPR2 Pro glove is still a 4 roll glove. This looks like the successor to the RX3 gloves Edit: pro gloves release the 22nd. In the IG comments for this pic STX said the release date for these gloves are tbd

The hand breaks look very similar to the RZR lacrosse gloves released last year, which used a single molded foam piece for the backhand with segmentation cutouts... If that tech has been moved over to hockey gloves I can see it being an interesting change in how protection packages are made.

indeed is the ft4 stick to go along with the ft4 skates. only a matter of weeks till the ft5 twigs come out 😂

It would be a shame of the PureGrip died as I hope he Surgeon line continues and the Halo is just a specialty stick in the same line as the ADV, Fantom, etc.. As for the gloves, they appear to be a cool idea, however, my thinking at the moment is that it is going to be a gimmick that doesn't really improve grip, but catches eyes. Also, with so many breaks I hope there is additional protection underneath.

The prototypes were super loose fitting. But I know the fit wasn't finalized so I can't say how they will actually be. These gloves will be called Halo, not sure if they will be Surgeons or what. They had HPR2 pieces on the prototypes.

I mean, what Nick says it's kinda whatever. My point is that i did not experience the same feeling that you did. Obviously we can disagree, my point being that if someone comes here and reads this thread, they should know that there are different opinions. In my case, I read your post, wrote the Pure-X off as a bust and didn't bother with them until Nick convinced me to give them a try. The only reason I mentioned Nick is because he convinced me to give them a shot. Once I did I have to say from my own experience that I didn't have the same issue you did. (Obviously this is sales, but he said if I don't like them to give them back and he'll give me a set of pure +2s from his personal stock, so I really had nothing to lose and nothing to gain here). Anyway, point is, regardless of Nick, I did not have the issue you described with the Pure-X. PS- I agree, it's nice to get a little action here on the roller board

Yes, but it isn't a thing with CCM not paying, Fluery painted the stick himself evidently. He used to be a CCM paid athlete and this might have something to do with him not wanting to show off their stuff if he isn't.

I think it comes down to competition level and program size. If your local facility has 4 to 8 teams per age group and the rink balances teams well, there is a lot of benefit to in house only, with evenly balanced competition. I believe that it does kids no good in their development to be playing on a team that always loses by a lot of goals or always wins by a lot. Kids need to experience all facets of the team game to develop. If your program is small and struggles to put more than two teams on the ice, having the kids play other towns is more beneficial in my opinion. It should also be noted that having a team go to another rink to play another house program is not travel, provided the other rink also balances their teams appropriately. On an individual player level though, the decision as to whether or not a player should play travel really depends on the challenge they are experiencing at the house level. I have coached travel and house, and I always tell the parents of players that I coach, that there is no need for true A, AA, AAA etc. play as long as your player is being challenged at the level they are at. If the player is absolutely dominating every game at house level, they should try travel as they need challenging competition to push them to develop further. If they are not dominating they should stay where they are. Overall I tend to agree with USA hockey, I really don't think true A,AA,AAA travel hockey is needed at squirt and below. I think that we could go a step further and save travel until U14. In a lot of places, travel hockey is really just a way to milk parents for thousands of dollars each year and doesn't provide a lot of return on investment, development wise. Ice time provides the largest benefit to development, and if house programs provided the same amount of ice that travel programs provide there would be similar development in house players without the expense of travel.

It shouldn't. Though I can sort of understand how some people playing maybe in lower level hockey leagues would be more interested in coasting/gliding and less concerned with agility; hard start/stops.

The real issue with this sort of testing is players tend to base their comments of a comparison to their current stick. That's a moving target and offers little to no baseline. What you should try to do is get testers to use a "control" stick before testing, something you know. All comments and opinions should be made in comparison to the control.

The ones at the closest True dealer weren't the same. There was clearly a structural and not only a surface difference. The difference in outer materials is obvious from a distance. The structural distance was something I noticed because I squeezed different parts of the boot to check for stiffness. There was a distinct softness to the collar of the goalie boot that was lacking in the player boot. I pressed on it and it gave in, where the player skate resisted as hard as I could reasonably squeeze. Without time on the True skate production floor, deconstructing both skates, or x-ray vision I'm unable to say where carbon begins and ends on True's boots. But the squeeze test on the pairs I got to inspect definitely showed True can make a skate that is structurally soft around the upper cuff, especially around the Achilles, because I've seen it. I can't say anything about how consistent that build is, if it applies in general to True goalie skates, but it is something I thought would be helpful to the OP. Would others be willing try the squeeze test for themselves? I won't be by that shop again for a while, but we could see if that's a consistent feature or a rare fluke within hours if others check their local displays or their own skates.

It's nearly impossible to tell based on the eye test. I'm pretty sure Modano used something above 1". I don't know many people (in recent memory) who use something deeper than 1/2 voluntarily. With the taller holders/lifts making it easier to get close to the ice on turns I really don't see any reason for using a deep hollow, unless you skate on marble-esque ice. I've also seen most people be able to transition shallower and shallower over time. The one thing that always made me laugh was people claiming their sharpening was "too sharp" after getting a 3/8 and deeper sharpening as that was the "house" hollow, and then going and rubbing their steel on a piece of wood to "dull" the edges. Good times.