marka

Howdy, Yeah, those answers feel right to me (not that I have the hockey history that most here do). But I'm not finding that stuff in the rulebook. This rule is about the puck going out of play: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084689-rule-631-puck-out-of-bounds-or-unplayable And this is about hand passes: https://www.usahockeyrulebook.com/page/show/1084666-rule-618-handling-puck-with-hands The handpass rule specifically says "directly to a teammate"... Nothing about the other team getting possession or whatever. It seems like if a deflection out of play counts as a 'last play' (and I can certainly see that), it ought to count if its a deflection off a goaltender's pads too, right? And therefore that wouldn't be a handpass? I'm asking because I frequently struggle to find the "of course" answers to weird situations like this in the actual black and white rule book. Which I'm pretty sure is more an indication that I don't know how to read the book, more than anything else. And which I'd like to get better at, because I hate not knowing the underlying rules in those weird situations. Mark

Howdy, So, sorta morphing this into my "ask weird rules questions" thread... Does a deflection count as a "play"? I ask for two situations... 1) a shot is taken from the neutral zone, with all offensive players on-sides. It deflects off a defenseman in the offensive zone, going out of play. Face off location is supposed to be determined by the last play, but I'm not sure if the shot is the last play or the deflection is. 2) offensive player in the offensive zone bats the puck with his hand. Puck deflects off the goalie's pads, to another offensive player. Hand pass or not? If you REALLY want to help me out, you could specify which USA hockey rule applies with your answer. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, I'm probably missing something here but it seems like you should be able to tell what part of the shin guard is contacting what part of your leg 'early' and causing the shin guard to sit out away from your leg too much. Which part is that? Can you take some pics of the shin guard on your leg without socks/tape (and maybe without the skates on either)? Mark

Howdy, I knew that for the retail stuff, but I missed that they were doing that for the pro ranks as well. Mark

Howdy, Thought this was an interesting article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/bruins/2020/02/08/chinasticks/Nq3exRpRtqwLTA5wyawYEI/story.html I was surprised to learn that CCM & Bauer made their pro stuff in China now? Also curious if the slowdown might extend any new equipment debuts / whatever. Mark

Howdy, Thinking the chances of legal Step blades for trigger holders have gone down even more and that Step holders aren't going to be around long. But I don't really know anything. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Mako skates having rivets loosen up seems to be pretty common. I've seen lots of mentions about it and I know my makos do it too. As to how often they can be replaced, it depends on if the shop screws something up during the process, if you catch it early enough so that the holder doesn't get beat up while its loose, etc. I will say that one thing that helped me was to get more rivets replaced with coppers. The coppers seem to clamp better and not suffer the same loosening issues. Mark

Howdy, "Vulcanized rubber" covers a heck of a lot of ground... For instance, all tires are vulcanized, but some remain really soft in winter weather and some get so hard they will literally crack instead of flex (racing tires). This product looks interesting, but I'm not sure its "$15 to try something I'm not sure I want/need" interesting. Mark

Howdy, I think everyone is going to have different patterns for usage. And what works for you is going to depend on what steel, what hollow, how sensitive you are, etc. etc. For me (regular Step steel, 3/4 Fire hollow), I don't notice a difference in the way my skates feel for say the first 6 to 8 hours or so on the ice. Lately what I've been doing is making 3 passes every 6 to 10 hours or so. I'm not religious about it. If I haven't sharpened for a while and I have a game, I'll probably throw them on there. If I'm just reffing, I probably won't. Mark

Howdy, I bet Sean would give you lessons after the morning skate on Thursday... Mark

Howdy, Is it possible to ban users from specific threads? Mark

Howdy, Well, I guess when Sparx stops selling overseas, we'll know why. Mark

Howdy, From the little I've seen, used rings sell pretty quick, at least on ebay. I casually keep an eye out for a deal on weird ones like a 3/8", just in case I have crazy friend that wants to try it or something, but I very rarely see used rings get listed on ebay and they always seem to sell fairly quickly for not enough off of "new from Sparx" for me to want to deal with a rando. Which is all a long way to say... I bet if you list it here it'd sell pretty quick. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Oh and yes, super car or not doesn't really matter a lot here. Any 'super car' made for normal road use in the USA will run just fine on 93 octane fuel / is designed & engineered to use that fuel. Racing fuel is (99%) for _actual_ racing. Mark

Howdy, Generally speaking, additional octane for an engine that doesn't need it actually hurts performance, vs. helping it. Short version, its extremely unlikely to help your car's performance and might have negative effects. Octane is a measurement of the resistance to detonation, which is another way of saying that its slower/requires more energy to ignite as octane goes up. The reason some racing engines require higher octane fuel is that they have a significantly higher compression ratio than 'normal' engine. That higher amount of compression can inadvertenly ignite the fuel mixture of a lower octane fuel, so racing fuel is used that resists that early ignition / detonation better. If your engine isn't a very high compression racing engine, there's no need for the higher octane fuel and if there is any effect, its that it will slightly hurt performance. Having said that... The amount of timing advance can also play into performance. More advance == more performance, at least up to a point. The issue with more advance is that again, it can cause detonation and higher octane can help limit that. So _if_ your engine has enough compression _and_ it has tuning/sensors that can take advantage of higher than normal octane fuel, you _might_ see a performance benefit from increasing octane over the normal 93 'super' level. But its more likely that none of that will apply and you'll just be burning up $10/gallon fuel that will have a negative effect if it has any effect at all. YMMV. Literally. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Grrr. Nothing like driving to the rink to find out that pickup has been cancelled. Small blessings. It was only 15 minutes away, I guess. Mark

Howdy, Yeah, agreed on 2 minutes most likely... Its still hard to see much on the video and there's no way to know if the guy was otherwise being an ass prior to this, which could influence me, but I would imagine that I'd have given him a minor for checking. Mark

Howdy, I can't see how it would matter, in terms of # of passes, unless you have an actual cross grinding ring that has more aggressive material removal. The same amount of steel ends up being gone. Which is a long way to say that I agree with your take on using a ring (that you already have) that otherwise gets little use as your 'cross grind' ring. 🙂 I actually did a pair a couple days ago where a cross grind ring would have been helpful. 1st pair so far. About an inch of inside edge damage under the ball of the foot. Ended up doing something like 15 passes with a regular ring to get it (mostly) taken care of. Mark

Howdy, A couple things: 1st, generally speaking when I do other folk's skates I do 4 passes unless there are problems. Usually those 4 passes are enough. You cannot make a categorical statement like you are above. When I'm doing my own, I usually do 2 or 3 passes. 2nd, if you're doing other folks skates, presumably you're not doing them for free. Charge enough to cover your consumable cost or don't sharpen them. Mark

Howdy, I can never see what's happening too well with these Live Barn style single camera setups, but that certainly didn't look like a no check league to me. Why'd the ref fall? Mark

Howdy, What technology does Sparx use to code the rings? Looks like NFC read/write is built into phones these days, right? Mark

Howdy, I used the thin Pro/Kane Tacki-Mac grips pretty quickly after I started 4 years ago up until about 4 months ago. In April i had a TFCC tear in my wrist on my top hand and it took the entire summer to heal. When I came back, I tried a much larger knob (triangular shape made with 10 wraps of 1.5", 20 wraps of 1", and 10 wraps of 1/2"). It helped a LOT with the wrist pain I was still experiencing. I assume because it kept my hand more open / otherwise changed the geometry / forces on my wrist. I inadvertently tested if it was working once by mistakenly only using 10 wraps at the 1" stage vs. 20. Even just that minor difference was noticeable after a period or so, with more wrist pain than usual. Mark

Howdy, I'm not entirely convinced that this is a great method to determine if you've cut the whole edge. I wonder if the material coming off steel "scrubs" the marker away. But I've never tried to make a large radius change with only a single pass or something to test it. Mark

Howdy, Anyone have any details on the Warrior team sticks? PSH shows the Alpha QXT Pro Team, Covert QRE Pro Team, and Alpha DX Pro Team sticks all in the hand/flex/curve I like. Wondering about their weight specifically, but also any other experience would be great. Mark

Howdy, Sherwood intermediates (ek15, Project 9, 65 flex) seem to be the same shaft dimensions as their Senior sticks (ek365, 75 flex). I've interchanged between intermediates and senior over the past few years and not noticed shaft dimension differences across various brands I'd need to actually go measure various sticks to quote models though. I had the above cutoff ends on my desk. 🙂 That said, the 60 flex Easton Synergy I just got on clearance seems to have a slightly smaller shaft than my other sticks. Its also decently shorter (short enough that its still an inch shorter than my normal height, which is cut down an inch or two from typical intermediate lengths). Mark