marka

Howdy, I see Matt Murray using what looks like a regular Gatorade bottle, except that it has a long straw on the top. I can't find that anywhere for sale... Anyone know where to get one of those? I have something similar now, but the top is a pull to open type of thing and it frequently leaks at that joint, while the one I see on TV looks to be all one piece, without the push/pull setup. 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, Yeah. I kinda wonder if they'll look better in person / in motion, but the pictures I've seen have all been "Blech!" in terms of my reaction. Its like someone washed them and the colors ran or something. 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, Not a dick move. I'd also say to give the woman a break as just after getting thrashed is not anyone's best time, but you said it happens often so, whatever. Chalk it up to grumpy people being grumpy and drive on. 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

Howdy, I've used a few different things and I think the protection of the Easton Pro 10 and Pro 15 pants have been by far the best. That said, they're pretty heavy / bulky. I switched to a Tacks 7092 girdle and didn't feel like I was giving up too much protection and they were nearly half they weight. I'd recommend either over all the standard "low to mid priced" pants I've seen. FWIW. Mark

Howdy, This reads to me like they think the damage is related to game play, not that you timed out of the warranty. Given that this is a crack and doesn't seem to be related to a skate cut or something, I would push back pretty hard on this determination. At a minimum I'd be on the phone with someone from Bauer. And yeah, put me in the "if they didn't do something, I would avoid Bauer in the future" camp. Mark

Howdy, Yeah, my issue is that when I'm reading through this stuff in the rulebook, it pretty immediately gets way too deep for me. Like the picture of that page... I read that and my overriding reaction is "Um, WTF?" Maybe it doesn't matter, at least for now? In the men's league games I've played in, there's basically only been minor penalties and game misconducts. I don't recall ever seeing a major or misconduct called. Mark

Howdy, Another one... As a player, I just go sit in the box until the ref tells me I can leave... That's not going to cut it. 🙂 Is there some straightforward guide to this somewhere? I get individual minor penalties. I don't necessarily get coincidental penalties, how more major stuff works, etc. As a dumb for instance, I don't know when you play 4v4 vs. 5v5 when a player from either team gets penalized. Thanks! Sorry about the dumb questions. Mark

Howdy, Yeah, I have a copy of the basic manual and read it. Thanks for the info! Mark

Howdy, So... Is there no hand signal from the ref when they blow the whistle for a dead puck? Any difference for goalie covering vs. player? I'm not finding one anywhere, but its hard to confirm a negative or whatever. Mark

Howdy, Oh yeah... The tron visor worked great. Didn't fog up, was visually fine, etc. etc. I'm pretty sure I NEVER want to play with it though, since I think I would like it a LOT and I really like my teeth, eyes, and facial structure. Mark

Howdy, First time out last night. I didn't get into any fist fights and nobody called me a motherf*cker, so that's a good first outing, right? 🙂 The guy who's showing me the ropes / runs the league actually couldn't be there, so I was reffing with another guy. Felt bad for him that he was working with a rank newbie, but he seemed ok with it in general and helped me out with advise. My overall impression is that there's just so much other shit to think about / be ready for! As a player, I don't watch other players for anything beyond "which way will the play go". Obviously that isn't the case as a ref, and that's weird to get used to / change my natural reactions. Offsides calls were pretty easy... I play wing a lot so I'm used to watching other players to see if its ok to go or not. I had to get used to signalling a good zone entry every time to tell my partner it was ok though. I also struggled a little with situations where the puck exited the zone, was regained by the attacking team, but they still had players in the offensive zone. At times I was signaling a delayed offsides before the puck actually went back into the offensive zone and I'm almost 100% sure that's wrong. I also would verbally say "get out! get out!" when that happened, which I think is probably ok, in a beginner league especially? I sucked with initiating icing calls... When I was the deep ref (I don't know the right words... I mean the ref down at "home base" or whatever its called in the zone, vs. the "high" ref at the blue line) I frequently forgot to evaluate if the defending team shot the puck out of the zone. I think maybe I was only 50/50 at best on that? The league uses blue line icing, which I think actually hurts me with this, just because it happens more rarely. I need to get better here. As the high ref, it was fine. More time to evaluate and again, I'm often playing wing so I'm more used to evaluating that. Actually, in terms of hand signals I just sorta sucked in general. When the goalie would cover the puck I would blow the whistle and point at them... That's certainly wrong. And when I thought about it, I knew it was wrong, but wasn't sure what the actual signal should be... I'll need to review that. I imagine its either a wave off signal or just a point to the appropriate face off dot? I also initially wasn't waving off good zone entries every time, but my partner mentioned that to me between periods and I started doing it. Positioning-wise, I got a little better as the game went on, but for sure an area for me to work on. I'd read the above manual, but reading a diagram and saying "oh, of course" and doing it in practice in response to situations are two different things of course. When I was the high ref I would frequently get "caught" watching zone exits, vs. getting moving and staying ahead of the play so that I could judge the opposite zone entry and then get to my position as the "deep" ref. Even when I got moving early and judged the zone entry when play reversed, I would sometimes then not keep moving and get down to the deep / home base position. I also need to practice faceoffs. I didn't realize I needed to blow the whistle before I dropped the puck, but that was easily corrected by the other ref. The actual face off itself... I think I had maybe one puck land flat out of the five to ten I dropped? Horrible. Who knew dropping a damn puck would be hard? Counting players is also weird. Again, something I never worry about as a player. Almost made myself look like an idiot at the end of the game when the team that was down by one had 6 skaters on the ice... I realized the goalie had been pulled as I was about to say something. 🙂 Still, cost the team down by a goal a couple seconds while I held the puck on a face off figuring that out. Anyway, that's way too long already. 🙂 It was challenging and now I want to ref a bunch of games to get better at it. Its going to be slower going though, since I'm just doing it for my wife's beginner games. Even if I could, I don't think I'd be comfortable at this point with more serious games where I didn't already know a lot of the people. Got some positioning videos and hand signals to brush up on! Mark

Howdy, IIRC that girdle has a great reputation. Hard to see how you could go wrong at that price. I've never used one though. I think the Reebok 9k girdle is a step in and the 7092 is a wrap style, if that matters to you. Mark

Howdy, I think that sounds interesting. 🙂 The only thing would be when the All Star is also a young gun... A young guns team without McDavid for instance seems a little weird. But a "young remaining guns" team would still be interesting. I wish there was a way to get people there for the skills competition that were actually the best in the league for that particular thing. Like "hardest shot" without Chara or whatever seems pretty silly. Of course, I'm WAY more interested in the skills competition than I am the 3v3 game. Mark

Howdy, I liked it in terms of backwards skating. I think it was the additional stability helping there as well. Basically, it felt like I had a bigger "sweet spot" where if my weight was near the center of the skate (in the fore and aft axis), it was stable and solid. That said... I noticed my bad knee feeling a bit different and went back to the Zuperior S, just in case the (minor) additional torque to turn the blade on the ice was the cause. Only been a couple skates so too early to tell on that, but I would say that I didn't notice a huge stability difference between the Zuperior and the 50 flat, if that helps at all. If anything, the Zuperior may have been a bit more stable as my weight went backwards. Mark

Howdy, I would say typically around here we get a full schedule no more than a week or two prior to the session starting. In one of my leagues, for the last session it was scheduled week by week... We would get the upcoming weekend's games scheduled by Wednesday or so of the preceeding week (and, fwiw, NOBODY liked this... 2 or 3 days notice sucks). In short, the OP's league sounds better than anything I'm used to. 🙂 Mark

Howdy, I tend to agree with the others overall, but did want to make one comment: Playing hockey without subs is brutally tiring. What you're describing to me sounds pretty normal. After a normal shift length of a minute or two, you start getting more and more gassed. As that happens, your form suffers and you start bending at the waist instead of the knees, putting stress on your lower back. Couple that without a chance to let everything relax on the bench and you've got a recipe for lower back pain. For me, the fix for this one is more "play games where you have enough folks" and less that you're doing anything particularly wrong. I mean, obviously being in better shape will help, but there's a reason that lines exist at every level of hockey. Mark

Howdy, A local buddy just received his Trues and was initially raving about them. A week later and I hear he's getting another pair made because these ones were too long and he started getting heel lift. I'm sure there are lots of cases where their first pair is great, though. Does anyone know the stats on how many pairs they remake? And just how big is the profit margin on skates where they can afford to make two+ pairs per customer to dial in the fit? Mark