marka

Howdy, If someone had offered me a bet that the Pens and Tampa would be 0-fer in the first three games I'd have lost A LOT of money... Damn. Mark

Howdy, Their performance over the past couple seasons makes me wonder just how important Tocchet was. Mark

Howdy, Well, I don't think anyone saw the Pens getting blanked in this series, but at this point its hard to see how it goes any other way. Mark

Howdy, Sorry to read that. It certainly seems like you might have suffered from some self inflicted wounds in your saga, but its unfortunate that True wasn't able to work with you to come up with a solution anyway. Good luck with the CCM/other options. Mark

Howdy, You guys dealing with the medical stuff... Damn. I can't imagine. I also don't know what to say about it other than "good luck" and that I'm thinking of you. Keep fighting! Mark

Howdy, I've seen stuff like that in beginner leagues where its more of a group "do over" type of decision. But never in anything particularly competitive. Is this the reason for the FB post? Mark

Howdy, Semi-sorta related to this... Has anyone compared a warrior W28 clone to other 28's? In pictures I saw, it looked like the toe was more closed (like the CCM P30). Curious if that's actually the case. I'm liking the P30 curve, but not really liking being restricted to only CCM sticks. Mark

Howdy, Interesting. I notice that it doesn't have the 50 flat profile on it... Are there others from Prosharp like that one? I also never knew that the various quads were like the zuperior, where there's a specified size window for each profile! Mark

Howdy, Yeah, just a short sleeve T-shirt before. Reffed 3 games Saturday with the long sleeve cotton t-shirt over a short sleeve T and it worked pretty well. Hands maybe just a touch cold, but nothing crazy. If anything, my elbow pads stayed in place better as well, so win all around. If I find a good deal, I might try and find some long base layer pants vs. just underwear and impact shorts. I've never liked any of that stuff as a player, so I don't have any laying around. Slowly picking up experience. My last game on Saturday was a bit hairy as the guy I was working with had to leave early in the first since he wasn't feeling well. That left me doing it alone with a group that wasn't super fast, but still faster than I could easily go from behind the play to caught up. I kept up fine with offsides / icing / goal calls, but some chippy-ness started away from the puck that I didn't see much of and it escalated a bit. At least one really pissed off guy (who's not "that guy" normally), which sucks. Mostly all "learned hockey as an adult" players, so differing expectations as to allowed contact, etc. etc. Next time if that kinda thing starts happening I'll probably try and focus on it more vs. positioning / keeping up with the play. Maybe even stop the clock and have a quick chat with the captains. I also just generally need to get better/more consistent at the difference between "two relatively unskilled folks trying hard with limbs everywhere" vs. "penalty worthy". That's improving with experience, but it remains a weak point. Mark

Howdy, I'll add one to their causes... You might have a grinding wheel who's center doesn't match the others. My 5/8" ring needs 3 to 4 clicks to get the same edge heights as my other rings. Not sure if its always been that way or if its a wear thing (the ring is in the last 3rd of its life). Mark

Howdy, Yeah, you're going to have to see if other edge checkers also do this before you can know what's up. Could be either the edge checker or a tapered runner. Mark

Howdy, So, first go with a long sleeve t-shirt helped for sure. I was able to ref the game without gloves and without feeling like my hands were going to fall off. One question on doing this 'for real'... I'm registered as a player for USA Hockey. Do I need to register independently as a ref as well? I'd like to access the online course materials now, vs. waiting until the next season stuff opens up, but I don't want to waste $45 for 3 months or whatever. Mark

Howdy, All I can tell you is that I wanted exactly what you're asking for.. A P28 with a more closed face. I just compared the P28 clone I was using (TC4) to the P30 I switched to, it seems exactly like a P28, except the toe is closed instead of open. Blade length and lie are essentially identical. The P30 is a touch more rockered / has a little less heel and the toe isn't _quite_ as rockered / pointy as the P28, but they're extremely minor differences to me. The only noticeable thing for me on the ice is that the toe is more closed. I've never had a P46,so I can't help there. I had a W71 a while back and and don't really remember it being like a P28/P30... I just remember it having a pretty deep / wicked curve. I no longer have it though, so I can't directly compare. Mark

Howdy, P30. Unfortunately only available from CCM, so the stick selection isn't as good something more popular. Mark

Howdy, Let's review. * A customer gets his skates. The skate for _his shorter foot_ isn't long enough. * Skates are sent back to be remade. * True contacts customer to say "Hey, we're going to have to increase the holder length". * Customer (understandably) responds with "what? how come?", because nothing he's asked for would seem to indicate that the holder size would need to be increased. None of that is "expects long detailed messages". At this point what I know about custom True skates is that of the two local guys I know that have bought them, one seems in love and the other is on his 3rd go-around of shipping them back to be fixed. In terms of online experiences, the issues people are raising don't seem to be in the category of "fine tune the fit, like you'd expect" and are more in the category of "The skate was so jacked up that it needed to be completely remade". If I were True, I would be concerned with my image. There is absolutely no question that I would explore options other than True at this point, whereas a year or so ago that wasn't the case. YMMV. Mark

Howdy, FWIW, I think an edge checker is perhaps not _required_ but for sure an "If you're serious, you'll want one" purchase for one of these. If I had to pick between the two, I wouldn't spend money on the optical alignment tool, I'd just get it somewhere near and then dial in with the edge checker (since, in my experience, you have to do that anyway). Mark

Howdy, Did my first games for pay last night... Three games. Went basically ok. I need to be more decisive on penalty calls I think. I think that will come with some experience and self confidence... Looking forward to taking a seminar next spring, as right now there doesn't seem to be much scheduled around here. Question... I've been wearing black mechanics gloves since my hands get quite cold. I'd like to get away from that since I seem to be the only one doing it and Dr. Google suggests its a little unaccepted. The same Google says that either that I skate more / faster or I wear some thermal base layers to try and get my core temp up. I'm doing pretty slow games at this point and don't feel like I'm really out of position in terms of keeping up with the play, so I'm looking at base layers to retain warmth. Any recommendations? I'm worried about elbow pad slippage, since the elbows I use for reffing already aren't great about staying in place. I know there's hockey specific long sleeve base layers, but I'm assuming they're not designed to retain warmth. I'll probably just try a long sleeve t-shirt next time out, but figured I can't be the first person to run into this... Mark

Howdy, Put something 4" or so long that's flat across the blade and eyeball it. Worst case, use a quarter. My experience is that edges have to be out a decent bit (visible by eye like the above) before it makes a difference. But having said that, I don't have as much experience as most here. Mark

Howdy, Recourse in what way? Season's basically done at this point, right? I don't think anyone would disagree that the situation you both describe sounds like a total sh*t show, but I don't see how you can expect money back at this point. Instead, my focus would be on rehabilitating my kid. And for that, I would say to let him take the lead on it mostly. Give him a break from you talking about hockey for a while to decompress. Go to movies, do whatever. Then after a while see if he just wants to go to a stick & puck or something and see if he has fun. Let him drive how serious he wants to be from there. Mark

Howdy, Yeah. Our school system went from "watch the news / check online" to "call, email, and text both parents". And apparently there's no way to say "Hey, uh... We'd like to keep just the texting part?" Mark

Howdy, So doing this, would you attempt to overtake the play to get ahead of it when a turnover occurs? Otherwise being ahead of the play immediately turns into being behind it, right? Mark

Howdy, Anyone got any links to positioning videos for reffing as a single ref? I've seen plenty of 2+ positioning, but nothing that really talks about strategies for doing it alone. Mark

Howdy, Glad your kid is having fun playing hockey. That other team/coach sounds like a disaster. Mark

Howdy, So, got back out again this morning. This time with the guy that offered to coach me some. It was definitely nice working with him. On positioning, one thing he said really helped me... Basically that I should be thinking like I'm a 3rd, really conservative, defenseman (2 ref system, btw). So I'm down at home base, then as the play transitions out of the zone, I follow the play up, staying even / slightly behind the defensive players. As we get into the offensive zone, then I stay on the neutral zone size of the line and wait for play to transition the other way. When it does, I try and stay even or slightly behind the defenseman again until I'm back down at home base. It's not exactly that simple (I assume) since I may need to call zone exits in the offensive zone and zone entries into the defensive zone, but the concept helped me for sure. Also worked on just dropping the puck. I probably spent five minutes throwing pucks at the ice after the game and just that extra bit of practice helped. I think as part of my warmup routine when I'm reffing I'm going to drop a few pucks just to try and get into that same groove. Worked on signals some as well. The guy helping me is pretty particular on signals that aren't lazy or "happy" / "excited". I would say that when I play games I don't see refs that are that diligent about them, but its still good for me to learn. Anyway... It was a good morning. 🙂 I feel like I'm slowly learning some stuff and working on building my skill set. Hopefully as I get better I won't need to think so consciously about some of this stuff. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, For sure! Already on the calendar for me and Laura. Mark