gosinger

Our local rink banned the usage of a specific type of cheap European puck, as they shattered way more glass than any other. So while the dimensions and weight might all be more or less the same (meaning within the specs), the quality of materials used / manufacturing / composition can still be different between manufacturers, which results in different behavior (chipping, brittleness, ...) at different temperatures.

Anyone spotted those eyelets (TSE2EW washers, TSE2* eylets) in Europe? I've only been able to find the 711* type washers and eyelets over here 😕

I'd also greatly appreciate the Coaches Corner proposed by @stick9, however with a focus on coaches helping coaches. Exchange of practice plans, drills, team psych, etc - without stepping on anyones toes obviously (i.e. no re-posting of content by some other (paid) website). Also nice would be a "ask members about their gear" feature, so that people could select their gear and you could send a question to everyone that rocks/owns that type of gear for some informed feedback. Obviously some technical issues here (inventory lists vs free text, tags, etc), but might be nice.

Tbh this thread is starting to sound like feeding the trolls... Simply all be decent human beings, acknowledge that wherever humans are working there are going to be honest mistakes rather than malice, and work directly with those humans in question to address. In this specific case, lets have smu receive his new skates, see what he can work out with Rob directly, have a summary and go from there.

It is certainly possible to remove the holder, fill the holes with epoxy and re-drill them slightly offset, so this can be fixed. The question now is if it is necessary, if they are only slightly crooked and it is more a mental thing than anything else (meaning they are mounted straight and once in-game you don't notice it), I'd say keep em as they are. I recently moved from Make 2 (2 seasons) to Vapor 1x (1 season) to a second-hand VH skate that just happens to fit me decently, and I love them so much my next pair will be my own custom True skate. Take the "horror stories" with a grain of salt, very few (if any) people reported on issues with the fit so severe as the current case but that one spans the last few pages of the discussion.

It might be a kinda stupid question, but are there significant differences in construction between the VH player skates with shotblockers and the VH goalie skates other than the missing tendon guard? (obviously the goalie skates have cowlings and this leather loop in the back) Reason for asking, I might be able to score some cheap VH goalie skates regionally and remembered that some goalies removed the tendon guard from the Mako and used them as goalie skates, so maybe it would work the other way round as-well if one adds their own tendon guard?

Very much looking forward to seeing how this holds up, might be worth buying for some repairs as-well 🙂

Just check your local classifieds, ask at your local pro-shop (one of ours sells used skates from the pro team), ebay, for the US also stuff like sideline-swap, etc.

Sorry, I know nothing about the XX, before my time. However, rather than modifying the toe cap I'd look into stretching the boot, the XX might be old enough to be stretched successfully. I doubt it is worth it though, just flip em and get a pair of used ice skates that fit to convert (I recently picked up two pairs of APX and an 1X for ~60€ each).

I am a big proponent of sticking with skates that fit, so I'm mainly gonna talk about Bauer Vapor in your case. So the material your XXXX had was Tech-Mesh, which was on the top model until the x:60. Then it was available on the second-tier (x7.0) to the APX which already featured Curve composite. The completely different cut Nexus had Tech Mesh on the top skate for a little longer, but also made the switch to Curve. If you take a look at the Bauer Roller skates, you can see that they essentially added more wear guards / bumpers to their ice skates to make the suitable for outdoor play. Last season I took some Kydex (thermoformable plastic sheet), heated it up and glued it to the high wear areas of my APX skates - it held up nicely (especially in area where the toe-cap and the boot meet) and will most likely extend the life of the boot by quite a bit. Others on this forum have added multiple layers of 2 component epoxy as "bumpers" to the same area for wear protection. However, I only covered the regular high wear areas, so if I was to take a high speed spill / slide the boot might come into contact with asphalt in other areas as-well. If you are concerned about something like this (rather than usual wear and tear), you might consider covering the entire side of the boot with Kydex (kind of like a shotblocker would be mounted) or b) switching to a different boot.

On a side note, I was at the Las Vegas Center Ice hockey shop a few weeks ago, they had a stack of Mako II and a few Mako I available, sizes <= 8 and >= 9.5 iirc. Might be worth a call if someone is still searching.

Looking very much forward to this sub-forum :) About me: While working full time, in my off-time I am co-coaching our clubs beginners practices (40 ppl between 16 and 60), host a few small training sessions before shinny most weeks, and have recently started working with our local girls hockey team. I currently hold the lowest certification level of our national hockey body, but am looking forward to spend the time next year to progress to the next level. I looking forward to exchanging drills and experiences on running practices.

Sweet looking! Very nice setup.

@Sniper9 I'm interested in your experience, I just fixed my Edge + Step setup with tape but I am a little concerned about the holder, and as I have plenty of spare LS2 holders + blades moving "down" might be an option to consider,

With M4 T-Nuts the inner diameter is 4mm, so you will use a 4.5mm drill to do the new holes (depending on the outer diameter of your T-Nut and the "stretchability" of your outsole). I so far had the best experience with slotted stainless screws and have not had a problem yet, but hex-bolts should work out nicely if you can get them. I always place a washer between holder/chassis and the screw as-well for good measure. With the heel lift: yes, you fit them between holder and the heel of the skate to get a more aggressive forward-pitched stance. Definitly, a conversion is a very easy but rewarding thing, and once you've gotten over the "mystical fear of touching something as complicated as a modern skate" you'll do it without a second thought.

With regards to euro/metric sizes: I always use M4 hardware, worked out fine for me. Just get a few different lengths of stainless screws for the different areas of the boot, a few washers and some LocTite or similar. So get M4 T-Nuts (about 50% more than you actually need, I always mess up 1-2) and M4 stainless screws (plenty of 10mm, few 12mm/14mm/16mm, at least one 20mm+ in order to easily pull in the T-nuts tight). Sidenote: I just had added a heel-lift to my 1X for ice, and didn't even need to extend the holes, the M4 T-nuts were pulled right into the existing ones.

@Ebondo that is impressive, I would not have imagined that to hold up - kudos! I thought you might have installed it in the curve-comp (seen a few pictures of that so far), but that is all in the injected part.

Without being any kind of foot specialist, if you experience rubbing you could try the spot-heating and punching method, you can do it at home with a heat-gun and the back of a screw-driver as demonstrated here (I know there also is a VH vid about this somewhere): As the Mako can be baked multiple times this shouldn't do any damage (as long as you don't burn them) at all and might be worth a shot.

Just note that the STEP steel for the Easton CXN holder is not profiled for +1, so compared to the Easton retail holders it puts you slightly more on your heels (still, the boot+holder is +2, so not that bad). I've got 2 pairs in active duty, one with STEP and one with retail, switching works fine for me.

Depending on your hockey store (how much of a cut they take since you don't order directly from Fischer) and your request. If they have the mold for a common curve iirc its something like 150€ each with minimum order of 3 for the top model. That post was a year old, but I haven't heard anything else to make me think they offer low-kick now as-well. The 2016/2017 catalog doesn't mention anything either.

From what I've heard the 20k (previous model to the Ultra Tacks) was more protective, as they thinned the padding to show off the D3O. I've got the 20k, no major complaints on knee protection.

While I've got nothing factual to contribute, I wanted to thank you for your updates, as it shows one persons detailed experience with something that could happen to anyone in this sport. Not mainly for the medical information, but as a window into what goes on in ones head after such an event, and the road to recovery. Keep your chin up, and good luck with your return to the ice :)

iirc there were some QC concerns with Graf CA, maybe those will be a thing of the past now? All Graf skates I've seen in the past were from Graf CH and those looked fine.

Would be awesome to have them in the UK, from there everyone within the EU can get them (at least until Brexit or something....) :)

Playing with them on both my skates since about 2 years, couldn't be happier.