marka

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

Howdy, The ones I have (A6.0, A4.5, X Core, etc.) all have the same dimensions as the Sr. sticks. Mark

Howdy, Looked to my fairly inexpert eyes like 25 played it fairly well, perhaps a bit too much gap, but the guy who carried the puck into the zone is just a good enough skater to smoke him to the outside (which could be why he gave him a little more gap). The weak side D is just hanging in space while that is going on and doesn't come over to support so you end up with the puck carrier in front of the net in close alone and presumably he makes a hands-y play to score (I can't really tell). Honestly, to me it looked good right up until the puck carrier was able to get completely around the outside of 25. If he'd been able to stay with him well enough force the puck carrier behind the net or to the corner, everything would have been fine. Mark

Howdy, I never know where to post these "Thanks for Winterfest!" posts... Move this as necessary. 🙂 Just wanted to post and say thanks for another great Winterfest! Really nice to see folks again, particularly after being hurt this summer and missing SummerJam. I particularly appreciate everyone being nice/welcoming to Laura. She had a good time, even though she thinks we're all weird. 🙂 My first time going up to Guernsey's as well, which was probably the part of the thing I enjoyed the most outside of chirping Dave. Already looking forward to the next one. JR and everyone else... Thanks! Mark

Howdy, I'm comparing clones, not direct Bauer stuff, but I just switched from p28 to p92... The p28 (TC4 in my case) lie is the same as the p92 (Sherwood PP96 and TC2) from the heel until just a bit past the mid blade. Then on the p28 the rocker continues upward (putting the toe higher) as compared to the p92. Its early days yet, but so far I'm finding the p92 to be more forgiving of not having the puck in the exact right position on the blade. Mark

Howdy, Let me try this a different way. I try and keep my checking account # confidential. I do this by not giving it out to people that don't need to know about my checking account #. In this day and age if a company is both sending out promo materials to every hockey shop in two countries well in advance of a product release _AND_ simultaneously expecting that to remain secret... They're freaking idiots. I assume they actually _aren't_ freaking idiots, they expect the information to become known, and they're incorporating that into their marketing strategy. Clutching pearls when everyone behaves EXACTLY as you would expect them to is ridiculous. Mark

Howdy, Mark

Howdy, In this day and age, the idea that you can blast info out to every retailer and not then have it become basically immediately available is crazy. I mean, I guess its cute and quaint and all that some folks think it still works that way, but that's just nuts. Why do they send out upcoming product info to the retailers before they're allowed to tell anyone anyway? Presumably at that point in the process there's nothing a manufacturer is going to get back from the retailers that will modify what they release, right? Is it just so that they can decide what they want to order in terms of stock? Or is that just a hold over from earlier times as well? Mark

Howdy, If this stuff is such a big secret, maybe they shouldn't blast it out across the hockey world. Mark

Howdy, I think it was the Chiclets podcast where I first heard about the need for respect... To me, that's really where the line is. Peters probably would have been fine if he'd respected Aliu enough to recognize that he'd offended him with his choice of words, then apologized and meant it, for instance. Hockey is a sport where you're occasionally just this side of assault on the ice, then an hour later you're shaking a guy's hand and congratulating him on a well fought game. I think, done correctly, that's what respect means. Heat of the moment, wires cross, and you lose it? What determines if that was over the line or not is what happens after that. When you've got time to think / reflect. That said, I think some stuff is too far over the line, even in the heat of the moment. A coach legitimately unable to control their reactions to a game situation / mistake well enough to stop from kicking/punching a player? Hard to walk that one back. Using overtly racist language? Unacceptable. Its going to be interesting if this keeps building or not. Its also going to be interesting if it builds to a point where things like the casual misogyny that's so common becomes unacceptable. Or I guess a better way to say that is it'll be interesting to see how fast it builds. Its going to build... That much is clear. Mark

Howdy, 1ms at 80mph is ~1.5". I think I'll worry about other things first. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, Hard to see how that would pitch the blade back 2/32 or whatever it was. Mark

Howdy, I would strongly recommend that you go skate on some synthetic ice before you decide to spend money on it. I thought I wanted to do that, then tried it and decided that it felt differently enough that it wasn't worth it to me. Mark

Howdy, Any chance there will be True reps at Winterfest and they'll have some of these with them? I want to check out out in person. Like the idea of the MIPS system. Mark

Howdy, Are you using the same edge checker, in the same manner (i.e. which way the edge checker is facing)? I would think that if an edge got beat up enough to go from being even to being way off level, then the damage would be both visible and not uniform. But an edge checker that wasn't actually indicating level correctly could perhaps explain what you're seeing... Mark

Howdy, How'd they do that? Mark