tedpenguins

I'm currently buying my first set of gear to start playing net and I've got a few questions I hope you guys can help me with. I was at lhs yesterday and bought my blocker, catcher, pants, and stick. I've also scored some really nice Koho skates online for cheap. Lhs didn't have a c/a to fit me at my price point in stock but I did try some of them on to get an idea for what brand I would prefer. I've got it down to either the Vaughn Ventus LT88 and the Warrior Ritual G2. Has anyone used either or both of these? I wear some Warrior gear when I skate out so I'm kind of leaning towards getting the G2 right now. I also still need to get a helmet. Are there any out there that would be about the same price point as the nme3? I know that Bauer's going through some trouble with their masks right now but I didn't see the nme3 on that list. I'd like to try and stay new for the helmet just because of safety and precautionary reasons. Thanks for the help!

I'm in the same predicament. I'm 18 and played roller all the time when I was younger so skating on ice or roller was never that difficult for me. The only problem is that I can't stop, I'm basically the kid out of the second Mighty Ducks movie. I've been playing in a beer league for 2 seasons now but we don't get practice ice time and we only get a 3 minute warmup for games so you can't really do much more than skate and get a couple of shots on the goal. The rink that I play at is about 30 minutes away from my house but I'm also a college student so I don't get back to my house until the night before a game. The rink is also an extremely busy one so to find an open ice time to fit with my schedule is extremely difficult. My team did find out that the rink does give discounts on practice time for the beer leaguers so we will have a practice; we are only guaranteed one practice though just because of how busy the rink is. I can stop on inline skates but can't seem to get the hockey stop down on ice. The practice will end up being between 1-1 1/2 hrs and one teammate is having a friend come that has played his whole life to run us through drills. Should I expect to be able to learn this within that time period with his help or should I expect to have to work on it in some open skates if I can manage to attend them? I assume since I've got the general idea from inline I might only have to adjust the angle of my skates but that could prove to be difficult because of muscle memory.

I'm looking at getting new gloves for this fall and I keep going back and forth between the CCM Tacks 6052 and the Bauer X80. Has anyone tried out either of them? I don't want to get crazy and drop a bunch of money on gloves that'll be used for beer league and pond hockey. I've got CCM 4 rolls right now and I like how they feel but they won't last too much longer. If anyone else has any gloves that they've really liked I'd definitely be open to other ideas. I'd like to stay with CCM just because that's what I've always used and I like them a lot but if the price is right I would try a different brand.