Vet88

A couple of years ago a local lhs was caught selling fake Bauer sticks. For a while afterwards we could email a serial number to Bauer and they would confirm if it was genuine or not. I always thought they should offer this via a web service, it might not stop all fakes but it would put a dent in a lot of them.

Start at either of these sites, they have drills, age specific modules, small area games, long term development plans etc etc etc. There is a wealth of information here. https://www.usahockey.com/coaches https://www.hockeycanada.ca/en-ca/development

55 flex is dead. You can now buy another version from here: https://www.greatsaves.org/product-page/skate-lace-eliminators or you can make your own out of 5mm thick leather and stainless steel or brass grommets. Tie them to the skates with either laces or screws. I've made a lot for players but if you only want one pair and hassle free then the greatsaves product is a good one.

If the rest of the pad is in good condition consider taking them to a tailor to get the strap and velcro replaced. I've done this with my Jofa 8k pro and Rbk 9k NHL edition pads. I've tried every top of the line out there and still can't find anything that fits me as well as these do hence my efforts to keep these in use.

I suggest this but with another adaptation. I had a haglunds bump that needed surgery because I couldn't take any pressure on it, to get back on the ice I drilled / cut a hole in the rear quarter of an old pair of grafs and then had a guy who worked with carbon fibre build a protective layer over the top of the cut out section. No pressure on my bump and a protective layer over it to stop errant pucks whilst coaching. Going this way removes the skate manufacturers from the equation other than selecting what boot you are going to use. Find someone who works with carbon fibre and possibly someone who does shoe repairs and then between them you can put a boot together. Yes, it will be a frankenstein but it will be your frankenstein that you know will work and you can mod as required in the future as need be.

If you had everything at home AND the time to deal with all the issues that come with sub par equipment, then you stick with the status quo. But having put my 2 kids and myself thru the development years of training/games for ice and inline (often both on same days) every day of the week - dealing with boot pain, crappy bearings, chunking wheels and failed edges was such a huge pita. Looking back, my wallet definitely said wtf at the time but once fitted I never regretted the decision to buy good quality for them.

freestylers use this forward flex method a lot, here's a vid of one guy showing this (as well as going for a no lace skate).

I can possibly see why. A rink I coach at has 2 of the machines, the Home and the Skatepal Pro 3. Both of them sit in the corner unused, instead the manual Blackstone machine is used to sharpen rentals, figure and ice hockey skates. The problem these machines have is the alignment of the skate blade (and you can't check it once the skate is in the machine), it will do one blade ok and then the next is off. It's to do with the way they have designed the clamp, imho I think it is pos. If you don't keep the parts in top notch condition (ie basically in brand new condition all of the time) then any minimal wear on the washers for the blade clamp will eventually cause a blade to go out of alignment. I've suggested a revision to the rink (machine a new guide, add additional posts and use tight tolerance ball bearings to guide the blade clamp) and they are in discussions with Skatepal about it.

Get some ball of foot gel pads, cut them to the shape of toe area and insert them under the footbed, this should help with your feeling of more pitch under the toes. Downside is it takes up some volume in the toe cap area so if you have high profile toes then this may be a squeeze.

Here's a vid of the M20 sharpener, I'd want to see one up close to confirm but it looks like the whole machine oscillates as the blade hits the wheel. This just doesn't seem right even though it appears to be designed that way, just how you are meant to get a constant even pressure on the blade I'm not sure.

P40 will be similar in price to the Prosharp AS2001. They will have a sparx competitor later this year.

It depends but I come at this from a different view point. If his current skates are in good shape (no rips or tears in the eyelets, rivets intact, liner intact, edge holder still holding the blade straight etc) and he still skates well in them then the softer boot should not be an issue. I'd even suggest that putting him into a new, stiffer boot will disrupt his skating because of the change it makes to how his ankles will move in the skate. The stiffness of the boot should not be an indicator of how well you can skate. But if you have seen a performance fall off as his boots have got softer then there is an issue and it's skate related but in a poor way, he is relying on the skate to skate well and that is a sign of issues with his fundamental technique. A quick fix is putting him into the new skates. fwiw I am currently working with 6 players in our tier 1 league who have just changed skates recently (mainly going from well worn 1S or 2S pros to Ultrasonics). All of them are really struggling atm to adjust and their skating has turned to shite (even with their old profiles fitted). We are starting to get somewhere as they drop eyelets to release the ankle.

They were a great idea but they broke easily and for eqm's they were a nightmare in game so no pros would wear them hence general public perception was poor.

I didn't know vh/true offered flex zones? Every single skate I've seen from them has rear quarters that are ultra stiff and will never flex in any direction.

Yes, that is one of the main reasons to skate with laces undone. You will get feedback from your feet that will tell your brain when and how badly you are pronating in your skates. This is really energy intensive and over time, with enough training, your body will realign over the top of the skate blade and your pronation will stop. 3 simple drills to see how much the pronation is affecting you - acceleration from a standing start, front to back transition, mid to high speed tight turn. If you find your inside edge collapsing on you, that is the pronation at work.

The P40 looks interesting, especially as you can use templates. I wonder how they will price it versus the Sparx and Prosharp AS2001.

Stretching a boot is really hard, especially in recent models. You really only have the toe cap or rear quarter to do the stretch and you can only get a mm or 2 at best otherwise you rip the toe cap out or deform the heel shape. If you only need a mm or 2 I reckon you are better to find someone who can do a toe cap punch and then punch the toe cap out to get some extra length and then compress the foams in the heel pocket. I have got 2mm by heating and pulling the toe cap out but that was with a Bauer skate from around 2002 (I can't remember the model), I wouldn't try that with today's models.

I would suspect it has to do with the holder placement. Even a small amount of offset to the outside of the center line will make a big difference. If you pronate in anything then it indicates you pronate in everything - the stiffness, fit of the boot and holder placement just helps to hide it.

I recall seeing a release from Tydan back in 2019 that said he was using their Performance blade on a 10' radius. Lol, "using" could be a very subjective word in this release. McDavid is one of those outliers, one of the lucky 15% of the population that has neutral alignment. As Dr Lockwood said, his bio mechanics are so good he could skate just as fast in skates with no laces. An aside question, are you traveling with the USA / Canada team later this year?

I don't think profiles on their own are driving lateral crossovers, they are just one of the pieces of the puzzle that are driving advances in skating. By trying different profiles, hollows, steels, sharpenings, holders etc skaters are able to select the most beneficial combination to suit their style of skating. Think of it as incremental changes, 1% here, 1% somewhere else, add them all together and now you are talking significant change. fwiw the last I read was that McDavid uses a 10' radius and Barzal was on a triple when he won the fastest skater comp.

Paradigm or evolution? If you told any coach 10 years ago that one of the fastest ways to skate up the rink was lateral cross overs you would have been laughed off the rink. Even with his near perfect bio mechanics, could McDavid use his lateral cross overs as effectively in boots from 20 years ago? And traditional power skating techniques, aka Laura Stamm, long considered a gold standard are now been rethought with different techniques and approaches been developed. All of this because of changes in boot technology, design and analytics. Ever since boots have been made, manufacturers have been trying to make them stiffer with the belief that reduced ankle articulation would lead to better and faster skating. Reduced ankle articulation would shift the control of the skate to the biggest and strongest muscles in the legs - glutes, quads etc - and this would enable more stability and control. Lace up as tight as you can was part of this paradigm (originally they had to because the boot really offered no other support). Then over the last 10 years or so new materials in boot design created ultra stiff boots but the lacing message remained the same, generally coming from established people in the sport like players and coaches who have been around for years - that's what I was taught so that is what I will teach. My belief is that the data and research coming out now and over the next few years will alter boot design away from the quasi ultra stiff ski boot, for a technique and health perspective. The boot will evolve into a design that has different flex zones incorporated into it. From under the ankles upwards you will be able to get different, custom flex zones, the boot will still wrap around the foot but the ankle will be able to articulate within a form fitting boot. We have never had this mix of design before (stiff lower / flexible upper), graf was starting down this path with its flex zone but the rest of the boot technology was behind what other manufacturers were producing. How such a design might change or create a new paradigm for skating we can only speculate at this point but I would suggest that the changes in boot design over the last 10 years or so has led to different approaches in skating techniques and that we will continue to see this in the future as technology in boots continues to evolve and skaters learn to take advantage of this.

Lots of research referenced to back this up (warning - it does delve deeply into things), note the dates of the research as they are all recent. All the new research I'm finding is pointing towards dropping eyelets and looser laces to support ankle articulation. If your knees ever wanted a reason as to why you might want to change from those fully laced, extra cranked around the ankle lacing patterns that most of the "dated" advice out there tells you to do, this is it. https://adamvirgile.com/2019/08/08/the-impact-of-ankle-motion-on-ice-hockey-performance/

Haha, it is, the tongue can flop forward and this really screws with your cross overs. For game time you lace up like this (bottom 3 to 5 eyelets), tight or loose depends on how good you are skating like this and your preference. Daryl can just pull the boot off as he ties very loose.

I have but the performance hit for me is too great at this stage, I'm slowly closing the gap (versus laced up) but it's a long term learning process. I train with no laces and currently play with the bottom 4 eyelets laced up only (I move between 3 to 5 eyelets laced up depending on the boot I'm in). As to playing in games, this guy (Daryl Evans) played a chunk of his NHL career with just the bottom 5 eyelets done up and there are pics of him playing in all star games with no laces.

Eek, that's a tough question because I have different preferences. For retail skates I like the one piece construction because I find it has much more lateral support at the sole level. For me this is one of the key areas if you skate lace free. The Jetspeeds are nice but too soft when unlaced (but this was 2 years ago and my mechanics have changed a lot and I need to give them another go). The AS1 and AS3 are fine but my current skate is a custom extra stiff apx2 I picked up off eBay. If you want something close to the one100 when laced up then I'd go with a Jetspeed, the AS1 / 3 are in a completely different realm when it comes to stiffness.