marka

Howdy, Looks like he's failing the pencil test by what, like a 1/2"? I don't think tube socks are going to account for that. 🙂 Hope you can get the skates to work for you, regardless. Mark

Howdy, Good. 🙂 I got in the habit of listening to it in the car last season and miss it now. It was just weird that I couldn't find anything about when its supposed to start up again. Made me wonder if it was gone for good or something. Mark

Howdy, Anyone know when / if the Hockey Central at Noon podcast will start back up? Mark

Howdy, Amazing how much "normal" shifts... I started out with this reffing thing last December as a way to still skate with my wife. Didn't plan to make money doing it. NEVER wanted to ref a kids game. Fast forward to yesterday. At this point I've got ~90 games in. Earned $3.6k (gross). Gotten certified with USA Hockey. And I reffed a kid's travel game. Something I was adamantly against doing. 🙂 It was fun though. I've mostly done beer league stuff (no stats, refs run the score board, running clock, etc.) I did do a couple informal-ish kids summer games. But this was my first game where I needed to see / report goals and assists, penalties, etc. Luckily it was a pretty easy game. I'd liked doing Squirt age stuff when I did those few kids games over the summer and this was no different. The pace isn't overwhelming (I did one highschool game as part of the summer stuff, and my brain just didn't process hockey that fast). Parents and coaches still seem to realize that these are 9 and 10 year olds. Etc. It was also nice that my partner was a good ref (Highschool senior kid of a guy I played with on a beer league team. He's been playing since he was 4. 🙂 Honestly though, the absolute best part of the whole thing is that they play music when the play is stopped. That rocked. Literally. 🙂 Just kinda struck me how different this is from where I started. It is very much still just a hobby / "something to do". But I've enjoyed learning more about it, getting better at it, etc. No question that a big part of how I got here was messing up my wrist in April and wanting to keep skating. Of those 90 games, 74 are from that point. I've still got a SHIT TON to learn to be anything like a good ref. And reading back over this thread I'm seeing plenty of stuff that I said I needed to get better at that I still 100% need to get WAY better at. But I see myself making progress and that's fun. Appreciate the advice I've gotten here! Mark

Howdy, Not fair to the other team. They paid to play too, and its the responsibility of your team to show up with enough players to give them one. Mark

Howdy, Depends. The short answer is to just do what the owners manual tells you to do. Actual engineers for the thing you're using almost always beat Google. Mark

Howdy, Glad you guys were able to move down there to spend time with your mom. Hoping things go as well as they can for you and her! And yeah, watch out for stray hurricanes. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, No. Seems to be a "wear this brace and we'll check in 3 weeks" thing. I'm doing some stretching exercises this week to try and get some range of motion back, then I'll start doing some resistance band exercises. If I can get it back to at least what it was pre-cast, I'll play and try to just manage the pain. Mark

Howdy, I certainly didn't expect my wrist to feel WAY THE FUCK WORSE. Maybe unrealistic. I'm guessing the pain is from other things (ligaments / tendons / whatever) than the TFCC tear, just because they've been immobile for so long. Still sucks. Mark

Howdy, Per my wrist tendinitis thread where it turned into actually being a TFCC Tear, I've been in a cast for just under 4 weeks. Got it off today. Was hoping maybe I'd be playing pickup tomorrow. Uh... No. Another 3 weeks in a brace and even if that wasn't the Dr. recommendation my wrist feels like pounded shit. Crazy, CRAZY stiff and sore when its flexed beyond what the cast allowed. Going to work on gentle stretches for a while and then hopefully wrist exercises if the stretching helps, but apparently I won't be playing any time soon. 😞 Mark

Howdy, That looks great, but I wasn't able to find anyone selling it in the US? Mark

Howdy, When I didn't get much response, I ordered finger tape from Amazon. I got the .3" version the other day and its pretty narrow... Not sure if its too narrow or not. Otherwise it seems roughly equivalent to hockey tape. Because I thought it would be a little too narrow, I then ordered some actual 1/2" athletic tape. Should be here today. Unfortunately my wrist is casted up at the moment, so I can't actually do a knob and go try either out immediately. 😞 Mark

Howdy, Are there any sources for 1/2" hockey tape? I want to use that for knobs on sticks. Tearing 1" tape always leaves sticky thread hangers / whatever. I haven't found any hockey tape that's 1/2", but I have found 'finger tape' for rock climbing that looks to be 1/2" athletic tape... Same thing basically? Or do I just need to suck it up? 🙂 Mark

Howdy, How is this holder the giant step forward that folks were talking about? It looks like just another holder with a quick release? Is the pitch adjustable, is it way lighter, or ?? Mark

Howdy, So, as my world turns.... About the only positive of my wrist being bad / not being able to play is that I'm reffing a decent bit more, mostly as a way to keep skating and keep my 'game eye" as much as I can. I'm getting slightly better at forcing myself to mentally note which player I've just called a penalty on, but I'm still relatively horrible at it. My latest way to screw that up is on a delayed penalty to focus so much on not losing the player I'm calling the penalty on that I miss a possession change and don't blow the play dead until too late. It's always something. 😕 I would say at this point that I'm decent about recognizing when I should be calling a penalty though, so that's progress? I registered for real with USA Hockey and I'm taking the level 1 seminar in a couple weeks. Really looking forward to this. Against my better judgement I've reffed some kids games. Middle school kids, mostly. It actually hasn't been that horrible. Its a summer league at the rink I do most of my playing (and nearly all of my reffing) at and the coaches and parents mostly seem to have the right attitude. All of that brings me to probably one of my worst moments reffing, at least in terms of embarrassment. Kids game. One of the kids checks another kid, both go down. I raise my arm to call the check (non-checking) (and hear one of the coaches agree with the call). The loose puck is picked up by the non-offending team, play goes on for a bit. I apparently then have a mental seizure or something. Anyway, after the puck changes possession a couple times, the other ref (a 14 year old kid, been playing since he was 3) blows it dead. I review my mental picture of what happened, think its this one kid on the team. Point at him, call the check, get the "whatever, idiot ref" look/mumble. I go to the scorekeeper, give him the #. Coach on his team (the one that agreed with the call) says to me "the penalty is on the other team, right?" At this point, I look around, realize that there are four players out there for the other team, five for the team I just called the penalty on. Coach for the other team says "Hey, I don't have a 57, and then laughs saying "don't worry, I know who it was on". At this point, I give mental thanks that everyone else in the rink knows what's going on, go in, drop the puck and the game goes on. So yeah, I've got a little room for improvement. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, I frequently turn the alignment clicker a few clicks one way or the other based on my edge checker / experience with specific grinding rings. I never enter the alignment mode to do it. I'm reasonably sure all that does is move the carriage to the right spot for the alignment tool. For me, most rings are centered pretty well as compared to one another. But I do have one or two that need four or so clicks to get the edges level, as compared to the other rings. YMMV. Given the required tolerances, this really isn't surprising to me at all. And its one of the main reasons why I think anyone serious needs an edge checker. Mark

Howdy, Crazy. Happy for the Blues. Pretty amazed that Binnington didn't get the Conn Smythe. ROR certainly had a great playoffs though. What a story. Mark

Howdy, Wow! So do you push the tube back in or ?? All of this sounds awful. I can't imagine. Mark

Howdy, I think its different. A ref up in the press box with a microphone talking to the ear of the refs on the ice, who you see in person before the game and between periods is a much different thing than someone you see twice a year phoning in a call from Toronto. That's a way different vibe for when the four on ice refs gather together for a conference and in that conference there's another ref on-site watching from above. Challenges should still go through Toronto / whatever. This is just a mechanism for the on ice refs to ask for help whenever they want it plus a way for the on-site press box guy to say "Hey Harry... I think we ought to talk about that one" real time, just like he/she was on the ice with them. Mark

Howdy, I don't see how you "get rid of video review" in this day and age. Right now we have the situation where there's video review on everything, its just that the refs (vs. the fans) are only allowed to watch it in very specific situations. Of all the stuff I've heard talked about, I like the idea of having a ref in the press box / whatever watching from on high with video screens available to him/her and communication to the officials on the ice. I'm also not opposed to allowing a coach to challenge anything, with a 2 minute minor assessed if they're wrong. Mark

Howdy, I think they care, but I also think that you can miss a call and with 900 cameras everywhere, any time a mistake is made, its going to be caught. I do think there's a pretty big disconnect between "this guy was 5 inches offsides 30 seconds before the goal, so NO GOAL!!!!" and "The 2nd assist was a hand pass and we all know that 15 seconds after the goal was scored, but we can't change it, so... Sharks win?" Mark (edit: as a sometimes ref, this makes me feel a LOT better about stuff I miss. 🙂

Howdy, You may not like it, and that's totally understandable, but to the average guy that wants to get his damn skates sharpened, most shops _DO_ suck. And there's no way, as a regular consumer, to reliably find the ones that don't. Particularly when its the standard thing like "Joey is the guy at Pure, but Billy sucks and Jill isn't bad but can't deal with weird stuff either. Good luck! May the odds ever be in your favor". Oh, and then Joey leaves anyway because, surprise, working retail isn't a destination career for most folks. Meanwhile, despite your obvious dislike of these machines, lots and lots of people are happily using them very successfully. Because they do a pretty good job and do it consistently. You sound _EXACTLY_ like the typical machinist from 20 or 30 or 40 years ago when CNC machines were taking over. Manually sharpening a skate is an admirably skill. And, done well, you can get an extremely good result. But that takes lots of training/practice/feel and at the end of the day, there's not enough folks around that do it well vs. a hack job that destroys profiles, has edges so uneven you can see it with the naked eye, that nods their head when someone requests a roh and uses "the standard" anyway, etc. etc. etc. This is a process that begs for automation. The stuff about consistent travel speed, consistent pressure, etc. that it takes a while to get the right feel for is exactly what automation is good at. edit: And in the beginning, where was the money for Sparx to build those free sample machines for the shops? I would imagine they weren't doing a kickstarter project because they decided to turn down big money investors. They saw a need, had an idea for a product that filled that need, and were able to successfully market it to the people that wanted to fill that need. And guess what... Those people were mostly consumers, not pro shops. Or at least they were, until pro shops realized "hey... Wait a minute. You mean I can teach someone to sharpen skates in 30 minutes? And the results will be good?" Mark

Howdy, Yeah, Warrior Pro bag here too, and similar issues. The piping on the outside is just cosmetic, but the inside mesh pockets being torn is irritating. One of my skate pockets is mostly useless and all of the side mesh pockets have the bottoms ripped out at this point and stuff migrates out into the main compartment. Having said that, when I finally get sick of it I dunno what I'll get. $crazy for a Pacific Rink or something is a hard pill to swallow. Mark

Howdy, If you can get a Pelican case for half the cost that holds the Sparx, there's no question at all that that's what I'd do. Those are great cases. You're going to have to configure you're own foam setup (either the packing foam it shipped in or pick and pluck foam I'd imagine). Mark

Howdy, So... Been occasionally reffing here and there. Slowly getting better at stuff, still have quite a ways to go. A thing I particularly suck at is recognizing a penalty. And I suck even more about mentally marking and remembering who it was on. Same thing in terms of "who scored and assisted?", but the adult league I ref with doesn't track that, so I sidestep that problem. I'm pretty comfortable with positioning now in a 2 ref system. Starting to be better about watching the players vs. just the puck. Anyway, I reffed my first upper level game last night. B League game here in Pgh, which is the highest level we have in the organization I play/ref with. The guy that runs the league was out of ref options and he talked me into doing it despite me not thinking it would be a good idea. I'm glad he did... It was quite a bit of fun. The play was a LOT faster, so I was skating more and harder which was great. It wasn't so fast that I couldn't keep up, but was fast enough that I stayed warmed up and loose vs. the lower level games I've been doing where you don't skate as much and then tighten up some. It was also a lot easier to read the play, since players typically made decent passes / didn't fumble fuck the puck. So, for instance, if I was at the blue line and a defensive player had the puck on their stick without much pressure exiting the zone, I could cheat off the line since they were unlikely to turn the puck over stupidly. I definitely needed to be better about not being in the way... With the players moving faster and able to change directions much quicker, I needed to be better about reading where they were going and more quickly getting out of their way. It wasn't horrifically bad (I don't think), but for sure there were too many times that a player had to abruptly change direction to avoid me (usually away from the play, when their attention was up ice, not so much where they were going). Also need to be better about dropping the puck. In the lower leagues they're not as keyed into any movement of my arm at all. So I adapted to that and all, but frequently when I'd drop the puck it wouldn't land flat since I was dropping it in one motion from my waist line and I'm just not very good at that yet. I blew one covering the puck call pretty badly... I was on the side of the net at home base, the puck/offensive player went to the net and the goalie was down covering that side. I got screened just a touch and when that player moved through I saw the goalie down with blocker and stick cemented to the side of the net like he was covering the puck, so I blew it dead... With the whistle sounding just as the puck / player emerge into my vision from the other side of the net. Sigh. The guys seemed pretty understanding about it, which was nice. Anyway... Despite some serious misgivings I had a good time doing it. We'll see if I get any feedback from the other ref / teams via the league organizer as to just how awful I was but I'd do it again for sure, if they wanted me to. Mark