YesLanges

I consider it more "staying prepared" than "hoarding," but, yeah, I guess so. I probably have about a dozen pair, but they all cost me less than 1 new pair of modern skates. (I tried and already resold modern Bauer NXGs and Graf 5035s at a 50% loss on each...just couldn't skate the same in them.) Some of the Langes were close to $100, but I picked up most of them for $25 to $50, mainly just for the spare liners. Currently using the pair on the right. Backup pair is the other set of "Comps" in the yellow laces; and I also have the Laser IIIs on the left set up. The ones with the old tube blades are going to get the MBs when they come in (check out those 1970s laces). I rotate 3 sets of Icetek steels and wish I'd bought more holders and steels from the guy who had 10+ available on eBay a few years ago. Jeremy (How To Hockey) tried out a pair of Laser IIIs here and gave them a pretty good review, despite using only one with one of his modern Bauers on the other foot. I think he'd have liked them a lot better and he'd have been able to skate approximately as well as he normally skates if he'd have put an edge on them and just worn them on both feet for a real test. (He seemed to think that the plastic tips on the back of the blades were unique to Langes and said he couldn't fit them into his Sparx machine because of them. They were actually common to all of the old tube steels, regardless of manufacturer, before plastic holders came out in the late 70s.)

I suspect they'll just allow you go with a larger radius for more glide without sacrificing tight turns as much because the (first-occurring) pivot point becomes the vector of wherever your weight is transmitted from the sole of your foot through the boot instead of where the blade meets the ice. The glide/turning trade-off will still exist, but I think you might just get tighter turns than you would normally for a given radius. So skaters who normally go with a flatter profile will be able to turn better on them and players who normally go with a smaller radius will be able to use somewhat flatter profiles without sacrificing as much maneuverability. I'm very comfortable on the dual 8'/13' radius done by No-Icing that I've been using for the last 2 years; so I'll ask them what profile they'd recommend on MB. All I know is I'll probably be the only asshole in the world with 2017 blade technology mounted on 1970s boot technology, because I kicked in for 2 sets about a year ago and already have a "new" spare pair of Lange boots ready and waiting for them. Not messing with the setup I have on my current skates until I've tested them out.

I think we've been through this discussion before in a different context, but you're not actually disagreeing with me at all, by virtue of your first sentence above. If the issue is whether or not increasing leg strength will help someone learn how to balance on an edge, we're not talking about the difference between what you refer to as "normal human" strength and sub-normal (atrophied) human strength for a given individual; we're talking about varying strength levels in a normal (meaning uninjured, non-atrophied) individual. Those are two totally different animals. I agree that you definitely would not be able to skate on your edges the way you could before if you haven't yet recovered 100% from a traumatic injury, or before recovering 100% from the associated muscle atrophy, and before fully recovering your fine motor control. That's absolutely true; but losing your balance the way you describe really doesn't provide any evidence that strength is the critical variable at all. if it were genuinely a strength issue, you'd have collapsed at the joint rather than losing your balance. The fact that you couldn't balance yourself after your injury (even assuming that you were also weaker than normal for you), doesn't necessarily mean that you fell specifically because of your reduced strength level. It's much more likely that you'd recovered most of your motor skills but not yet your finest motor skills involved in balancing on an edge. Further, if leg strength were really the important variable, then anybody who can already skate reasonably well would automatically become a better skater (meaning better technically, not endurance-wise or speed-wise) anytime he increased his strength level. That's just not the case. Using myself as just one example, when I last skated at age 29, I was a pretty dedicated gym rat, routinely squatting 315 lbs for 15+ reps and/or 275 lbs for sets of 20+ reps (on my "light" leg day) in very good form. After 24 years off skates, I returned to the game in my 50's and at least 15 years since lifting any kind of heavy weights at all and at least 20 lbs lighter, of which a disproportionate amount came from less lower-body muscle mass, specifically. According to the theory of a correlation between leg strength and (technical) skating skills (like edge-work), I should be a much worse skater now that I'm so much weaker in my legs. Finally, in that regard, and what's probably much more important, was that I started weight training after I could already skate and nothing about the transition from "civilian" leg strength to gym-rat leg strength a couple of years later improved my skating (except speed) even one iota. (And yes, I also trained my lower legs and even had my own seated calf machine at home.) Now that I've skated enough to recover from my long layoff, I've really only lost speed and I'm the exact same skater now with no less technical ability than before when I was much stronger. If anything, I'm a slightly better skater now (technically), although much slower, because I've been less lazy about working on stuff that exposes my technical weaknesses instead of cheating to my strengths in practice the way I did when I was younger. Moreover, for the first few months after coming back, I was also acutely aware of which skating muscles hadn't been used in decades, but that awareness manifested itself in the soreness (and horrible night cramps) in those muscles in between ice times, not in worse skating until they came back. Now that I'm using them regularly again, I never experience any of that, but the point is that really didn't affect my skating, and I was already skating as well as I used to long before those muscles stopped feeling unusually sore and crampy. In other words, my skating came back before those muscles did.

I don't think leg strength training has anything to do with it, because it's all in the neural connection about balancing and distributing weight onto your edges (and getting past the fear of falling). I do agree that this would help a lot, because there's definitely some level of dullness that will allow you stop on both edges. (I'm not saying that stronger legs aren't better for almost every skating skill, just that when it comes to balancing on edges, strength or lack of strength isn't the issue at all.) The problem is if the only ice time you get is playing, you probably won't be able to play with edges dull enough that you can stop on them. Short of that, just hold the boards facing them and practice shaving ice one leg at a time. That will help tremendously with your inside edges, but you can't really use that for your outside edges. The only dryland training I can think of that might help would be sliding around on a slide board (or smooth floor in socks) just to get used to the sensation. It won't translate directly to ice, but at least it's the same sensation to try to get used to. To whatever extent you're able to improve on each "edge" on the slide board, that probably will benefit your progress somewhat when you work on it again on ice.

They just broke that shit out on us last week and I had to look up at the ref in the face-off circle at the blue line and ask "WTF was that?" (I know the guy.) "In the crease."

I immediately thought of that other thread too, except the vibe I get from this OP is totally different from that previous OP...and I don't think anybody gave that guy more shit about it than I did. In terms of usable body mass, one of the absolute strongest tanks in my league is about 5-11 and a solid thick (not fat) 250. He could easily steamroll most of us if he wanted to and he's also usually a first-line scorer. If he goes into the boards against 3 guys, the puck always comes out the other side on his stick; but anytime he anticipates a collision, he becomes a big pillow...absolutely never skates through people aggressively. The only time he uses his size is to keep his stick from being lifted or turning hard into a power move holding the defender off with his inside hand. This OP sounds like this kind of guy to me. Conversely, there's a guy who's about 6-3, 240 who doesn't do anything so blatantly illegal to get called, but he uses his size obnoxiously and he plays with a totally unnecessary chip on his shoulder. On face-offs he's lost to me he's shoved me right over backwards instead of trying to skate around me when I'm just holding my position. When I covered his stick totally legally in my slot with his teammate behind my net with the puck, he lifted my stick with his until it was all the way over my head and torqued me over backwards over his leg...as though that's "equal" to having his stick legally covered by mine. He'll also "retaliate" with a slash to the stick or gloves when the puck turns over if I did exactly what I was supposed to do to create that turnover by lifting his stick just as the puck was getting to him. That's the kind of asshole this OP is worried about being perceived as; but to my read,he sounds much more like the pillow guy. We also have a couple of Napoleon Complex idiots who glare at you for any (genuinely) incidental contact; and they're always the same guys actually throwing cross checks in front of both nets while also complaining constantly about everybody else. The guys who take the most physical liberties always seem to be the ones inappropriately outraged anytime someone does half as much to them. If you're pinned on the boards or surrounded, you have every right to skate as hard to get free as possible, even if someone goes down in your wake. You can also skate as hard as you want to directly toward the puck. If someone else gets there at the same time coming from the other direction and he goes flying, that's not on you. I once posted a clip in a thread about cages protecting you from hard unintentional collisions...Both the other guy and I knew the other was coming for the puck and both of us just tried our best to get there first...we happened to get there at the exact same time, both went flying backwards and he was out cold for a few seconds. Every player makes that decision for himself and part of that is knowing to be more careful if the other guy's twice your size. But we all know there's a big difference between that and just saying "Hey, I was just going for the puck!" when you're really purposely knocking guys away like curling stones even though your simultaneous intention was also to get to the puck. One guy once said that on the ice at a league scrimmage where he and the guy on my team who he'd almost knocked the F out checking him to get to the puck all sat together in the dressing room afterwards. My first words to him were "Hey, Dennis..." I reached into my bag and held up a puck "This is a puck"...then I pointed to the guy he blew up "This is a dude, OK?" My read on this OP is that his head's in the right place but he's second guessing himself because guys keep bouncing off him.

Welcome. I signed up here exactly 4 years ago, shortly before getting back on the ice for the first time in 24 years at 52. No doubt, the first time was brutal; but it comes back. Just go to sticks & pucks a couple of times a week and you'll be ready to play again in a couple of months. Everything comes back except for the speed and reflexes that you'd have lost anyway just by virtue of aging. If you haven't stayed in shape in the interim, you should just start working out and doing some cardio. That's something I never stopped doing and I know it would have been a lot harder to start playing again if I had. Been playing in a 50+ league, sticks & pucks once or twice a week, and doing clinics whenever I can ever since.

I recommend not responding to a 9-pg thread based only on reading the first post on P.1. The guy has come a very long way and has posted videos of his progress all along.

You might also want to pay attention to whether something in the way you lace and/or tape your skates is different with your pads on. I always had the opposite situation, because of the way I tape my skates around the bottom of my shin pads, which is impossible to duplicate without them. When I was an NNHA (now HNA) instructor, I always wore my shin pads whereas other instructors and coaches almost always just go with skates and gloves. If you normally put your skates on last, try putting them on first, because you might be pulling your laces and tying them with different tension when you already have your gear on.

PuckPilot, I don't mind having this conversation, but you sound a little hostile or worked up about it. I'm not arguing with you or ridiculing you; I just disagree with your conclusions and I believe your analogy doesn't hold up to analysis. This is just a discussion about a topic to me and not meant to offend you. First, some of the best hockey players I've ever known have been pretty scrawny, despite having done hockey drills for most of their lives. Second, if hockey developed muscles, many hockey players would have noticeable builds that corresponded to hockey to the naked eye, exactly the way athletes in sports whose training often does build muscles often do, like gymnastics, wrestling, and swimming. Third, if you could see some of the fossils I play with now, you'd agree that muscle mass is no prerequisite for hockey skills. (Elite players do often have something of a build nowadays, but that's mainly because all elite athletes do much more weight training now than they used to. Pro baseball players all look like NFL corners and safeties now, also; but it's not because playing baseball builds muscle.) Interestingly, skating does seem to build muscles much more often for women than for men, which probably has to do with women, in general, having better natural potential for lower-body development than men. But just because an athletic activity also builds muscles doesn't mean that the muscular development is directly necessary to performance in that activity. The muscular development that some people do get from skating (or tennis) is just a byproduct of the activity. If they stop playing, they lose skill the same way you lose foreign-language skills if you don't use them for a long time; but if they can't skate well the first time they get back on the ice, it's not because they lost muscle mass in their legs. While this is purely anecdotal, I've been lifting weights my entire life and was way too into it in my 20s and 30s and I played hockey until I was 30. I also did some personal training when I was in law school and I managed a couple of different gyms. If anything, playing hockey always interfered with maintaining the best build I (and others) could maintain through weight training. (And to whatever extent you need the hockey cardio to keep your body fat lower, any kind of cardio will do the same for you.) Even now, at 55, playing hockey a few times a week only makes it harder to maintain whatever build I'm managing to maintain. All of this sounding very familiar to me, so I think I've (also) explained before that your experience skating again after losing a lot of muscle to an illness has caused you to overemphasize the importance of muscular development to hockey. Just notice the difference in the way that (many) people who do something very physical for work and the way laypeople climb ladders, move furniture, walk around on I-beams, (or even just tried to load boxes on store shelves without looking like a spaz by comparison). The way the pros do all that shit so smoothly is repetition, exactly as you mentioned, but what that repetition builds is mostly neural connections in your brain and pathways in between your brain and the nerves and muscles involved. If you lose half your muscular bodyweight (or whatever) to illness, you can't really do much of anything you were doing before that happened to you because a certain amount of muscle mass is necessary to function. However, it just doesn't follow logically from that to a conclusion that the primary benefit of those repetitions is that they build muscle tissue.

I thought the same thing when I read PuckPilot's post and I think we've had this discussion before, but I'm not sure. You (PP) might be relying too much on your experience with a unique situation and assuming that it's more applicable than it is more generally. Certainly, if you lose a lot of muscle mass from an illness, you'll have a harder time doing anything that you used to do more easily; but it doesn't necessarily follow from that that strength is the most important component (or even a significant component at all) of that activity. I agree with Vet88 that skating (and soft hands and good shot) are all much more about coordination and technique rather than strength. In my opinion, if you took a test group of developing players and gave 1/3 of them only 4 extra hours of hockey drills per week, 1/3 only 4 extra hours of strength training, and you gave 1/3 of the group 4 hours of each type of training, you'd find that the group with only strength training improved the least (if at all), and that the two groups with the extra hockey drills would have improved significantly, but that there would be little if any difference between the amount of improvement in the two groups that received more hockey training in terms of hockey skills that can be observed and measured. The groups receiving strength training might only be stronger physically against opponents and have more stamina than before.

Before: After: Before: After:

I don't know about those flimsy old Jofa's, but I think the 40-year-old CCM Pro Standard and HT-2s (with some versions of their original padding) are as protective that way as current helmets. I've had my skates pulled out from under me and hit the back of my head on the ice as hard as you can hit your head and I was fine.

One I had from college and the other one I found on ebay. There was another one listed recently that was actually new and unused. If the Link doesn't work, just extract the item # from the url and search for it in "completed auctions." I don't know when they started or stopped making them, but they were standard NCAA issue beginning the first season that cages were required (1979). http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-PRO-TEC-HOCKEY-FACE-GUARD-MASK-CAGE-NEW-NEVER-USED-W-INSTRUCTIONS-/351829256660?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=beYfJY2JiZvCcCEVlYjDPD7MYzg%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I didn't want to start a new thread for it. Is there anything under the bench area of rinks that has a strong magnetic field? I wear a mechanical watch and I keep my valuables in a bag behind our bench during games. On several occasions, the watch lost about a half hour during the hour or so that it was back there. Ordinarily, the watch is very accurate.

Yeah. There are a few other guys with old CCM HT2s and Cooper SK-2000s. I'm the only one wearing the original CCM Pro Standards with the foam side bumpers...all original, down to the leather chin straps. Naturally, when I ditched the half-shield last year after a few close calls, my choice for cages was a couple of vintage Pro-Tec cat-eyes but without the foam lip pad...just some tape around the bottom bar. I love all that old shit. Practically every time I show up at open hockey, someone asks how much I'd take for one of them.

#7 in green achieving one of hockey's rarest feats in my 50+ league last week: putting myself offside: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7b13qok732g9y6z/video-2015-12-08-21-26-34.mp4?dl=0

While you're waiting from a response from the company, I think I can suggest an explanation for that: The coating sticks much more to the inner surface because that's where most of the blade surface area is. The edges themselves are much narrower and also more directly exposed to friction (especially friction perpendicular to their length, such as from stopping), so it sticks less to edges and it comes off much quicker. Anecdotally, I can attest to the fact that even when you spread it on pretty liberally, it has no effect on how well your edges grab the ice.

I'm kind of surprised that 95/1 works so well for me because I was always 1/2" ROH and anything smaller was too much bite. I thought 100/50 gave me more glide but too little bite. Is there anything with bite comparable to 95/1 but glide closer to 100/50?

In my experience, it doesn't affect your edges at all...just answering in case you don't get a response from SK8TFuel until 2019.

I understand what you're saying, but I think you have to keep in mind that whatever I'm doing to my edges is only the case until the next sharpening because the machine takes off the entire layer that could possibly be affected, although I defer to skate-sharpening experts on this. It seems to me that the worst you can do overusing the stick in that regard is make it more easy to develop nicks, but only until the next sharpening. I started doing it because after a lot of stops, the inside edges don't grip as well on turns and the outside edges start to slip out on cross-unders and I think actually sharpening them after every skate is very much overkill, at least for me (vs. NHL players who sometimes have them sharpened or swapped out in between periods). I don't think I use it as a substitute for sharpening at all, but it does really seem to let me get the longest skating time from each sharpening. If anything, I think I still send them in for sharpening a little sooner than I could. I also play with some guys who use the stick for months in between sharpening and I see them doing 5 or 6 very hard passes in the dressing room before every game, which is what I'd consider a substitute for sharpening. And, in my case, what I consider a harder pass for me is more like "somewhat firm" rather than "light." I've never hit them with a single pass as hard as some of the guys I know who really flick that stick down the blade with a lot of pressure, and quite a few times. All I know is that my "system" takes blades that were feeling a little less grippy than I like the last time I got off the ice and makes them feel really perfect for me and with exactly the grip I need for hard turns the next time I use them. If anything, I'm sort of amazed at how well it works and how great my edges feel when I get back on the ice next time, just from this cheap little device.

I know Chad's not a fan of the Sweet Stick, but I've had no issues with it whatsoever. The honing stone can only smooth out small nicks that extend beyond the sides of the edge, but it can't "restore" the edge itself at all. I understand that on a microscopic level, the V-shape of the Sweet Stick only bends the edge toward the inside, but to the touch of a finger and (definitely) on the ice, it feels like the edges are "restored" to being much sharper. The only issue I've encountered is increasing (my perception of) bite too much with too many passes or too much pressure. In my experience, the Sweet Stick allows me to keep them nice and sharp a lot longer and I've noticed no difference whether they're ROH or FBV. Initially, I was very careful not to use as much pressure as I did with ROH, but after trial (and no error so far), I use the same pressure as I did with ROH. (I cut down to 2 passes recently instead of 3, because 3 left them with a little too much bite stopping, although I appreciated it turning.) The stoning part of my "system" might not be necessary, but my standard home blade prep in between skates is to use the honing stone first to reduce nicks that extend past the edges as much as possible. Then, I do one medium-pressure pass with the Stick from toe to heel, and one more pass increasing the pressure gradually to fairly hard as it moves out from the center of the blade to the heel, because I want more bite for sharp cuts and not as much for stopping. Then, I go back over them with the honing flat stone. I go both directions with the stone on the flat but I'm also careful to go only toward the rounded toes and heels and never inward from the toe and heel because I just don't like the idea of moving it "against" the curve even though it's only on the side of the blades. I only exceed 2 passes with the Sweet Stick to get larger nicks out and I try to hit the rest of the blade as little as necessary to do that. So far, I've never had a big enough nick to ruin the edges, which was surprising to me based on how much more delicate FBV edges are supposed to be than ROH edges. Usually, when I'm done, none of the nicks I could feel with my finger beforehand is still perceptible, with the only exception being the occasional nick that's just too big to keep going back over with the Sweet Stick as many times as would probably be necessary to reduce it further. I finish off with a coating of Sk8-Fuel but I'd appreciate someone explaining why the instructions say to wipe it all off afterwards. I wipe off only the excess, but I don't wipe the bottoms of the blades until right before I put them on; and I've also just left it on.

Just had the chance to play on 95/1 and it really felt great; it allowed me to cut as sharp as I can possibly cut without bottoming out and hitting the edge of my boot on the ice. Meanwhile, no bite issues stopping whereas on a ROH cut, anything that didn't hold me back on turns was way too much bite stopping. Like you, I don't really notice the difference in glide but I'd bet that it would be perceptible in a negative way if we went back to ROH. To me, the main benefit is no longer having to trade the sharpest cuts to avoid catching an edge stopping. As far as adapting to different ice conditions, you may just want to try the Sweet Stick Re-Edger stick for hard ice, because I've noticed that (at least for me) it works just as well on FBV as on ROH and really restores the edge and tremendously extends how long I can go between sharpening. If anything, the trick is learning how many passes is too many and which parts of the blade need more passes or fewer. For me, it's only two full-length passes with only light to moderate pressure and then one heavier pass from the middle of the blade to the back end to hold sharp turns. I know that Chad's explained that it just bends the edges back in, but (again, for me), the feel is that of a sharper edge if I do it right and too much bite if I overdo it. Big fan of that Sweet Stick.

Thanks again, Chad. I was just logging in to edit that before you responded because I meant to ask about 95/1 not 90/1. (I assume you meant 90/1, not 90/a). Why do they use "100" for some cuts and "1" for others if they're equivalent? Because that's very confusing. No-Icing says that 95/1 is the smallest possible increase in bite from 100/50, but how does that change affect glide?

Thanks, Chad. Could I trouble you to explain the difference between 95/75 and 90/1 and why some FBV cuts are in the format of single digits for the second number instead of two digits? (Thanks in advance.)