marka

Howdy, Cool. I just wasn't sure you were aware this was a NOS item that whoever the ebay seller is apparently purchased as part of a lot, vs. something they were producing now. [Edit: That's an assumption, of course... But after I won the auction for one of them (for $6) plus a few others (unrelated) I offered to pay another $6 for the other identical modsquad jersey he had listed that got no bids if he'd ship it for free in the package. Instead, he threw it in for literally nothing. It didn't seem like he was really trying to make money by producing new items, which is why I figured he got them as part of some big package deal.] PM me with whatever the profit is on these and I can paypal you some $$. [edit again: Or let me know if you'd rather do something else. I like the jerseys though. Pens/Bruins colors. :-)] Mark

Howdy, FWIW, maybe not... These apparently came from a closeout / "NOS" supply. My guess is that they were made back then and never sold? Dunno. I paid $12 shipped for both of them... http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=modsquad+hockey+jersey&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&_udlo=&_udhi=&_ftrt=901&_ftrv=1&_sabdlo=&_sabdhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=44514&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=1&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50 Mark

Howdy, No real update for a while, so I figured I'd post up my curve dalliances. In the first year, I tried a few things. Sakic / W03 / whatever to start with, then a W01/PM9. Ended up with a W88 / P40, which I mostly liked. Then I read something about the E28 and kinda wanted to try a toe curve, so I got one. I liked it. It felt like I could control the puck better on the toe of my stick during stick handling (particularly to the forehand side) and wrist shots felt better / quicker. I eventually also figured out to rotate the stick forward before taking slap shots and that seemed to really help too. But my backhand passes / shots & catching passes on the backhand were awful. If I didn't have the puck in exactly the right place on the heel of the stick on a pass / shot I had no power at all. It also seemed like when I had to reach even a little to catch a hard pass out in front of me coming from the forehand side, the puck would bump the stick up / get through. Someone here also posted something about how it was annoying that kids were reading about E28 curves and those being popular and that meant lots of kids starting with that curve and how that wasn't good. Not a lot of details as to why, but I figure I'm basically a 47 year old 2nd year Mite at this point so... Meanwhile, I'd sold off a bunch of gear that I'd accumulated in my first year (let's just say that I clearly belong on a gear whore site...). So I didn't have any other curves. But I decided to check and it turned out the guy I sold most of the gear to still had the True MC (A4.5 intermediate) I'd sold him and was willing to sell it back to me. So I did that. I noticed an instant improvement on backhand anything... Shot, pass, puck reception... All of it was better. And I didn't notice any particular difference in stick handling. Maybe the issues I thought the E28 curve helped with were mostly resolved by me just getting a little better at it generally? I haven't decided on shot differences yet... I think I'm still way more influenced by factors like "how much did you just fuck that up?" vs. "this curve is better than that curve". Not sure about receiving hard passes in front of me yet either. It seems a little better, but maybe I've just gotten better at it? Or I'm concentrating on it more? So yeah. Woo? I dunno. I'm tempted to ask and see if you expert type people out there think the W88/P40/P88/MC curve is better for beginners vs. the E28/MC4 curve, but I have no confidence that I'll actually listen to the answers if I get some new weird bug up my ass about curves... Maybe a Sakic curve would be perfect!!!!!! :-) Mark

Howdy, Doing my typical "cruise ebay looking for cheap interesting hockey jerseys" and came across a couple that I bet folks here know the story behind... http://www.ebay.com/itm/MEDIUM-ModSquad-Online-Report-Black-Gold-2-Throwback-Minor-League-Hockey-Jersey-/132118062236?hash=item1ec2d9a49c:g:-SoAAOSwzaJX-URq Mark @JR Boucicaut, what's the scoop on when these were made?

Howdy, Jesus. That's awful. Condolences to all involved there. Mark

Howdy, Last week I passed the "I've changed my work password 100 times" threshold. :-) Mark

Howdy, So, the "outside edge single foot hockey stop" thing is an example I can directly relate to. I can't do that. I've been working at it for a little while now. I've been skating / playing on the average 4-ish days a week for a year. I would be very, VERY surprised if this is an issue of strength, vs. one of technique. Strength / endurance might affect the 5th stop in a row, but I can't imagine that its an issue for the first one. I'm not saying that some leg / ankle / whatever strength isn't required to skate. Clearly it is. What I am saying is that I think that's maybe 5% of the puzzle at absolute best and its relatively easy for anyone to get the necessary strength to make the various skating moves work in a non-endurance / repetitive scenario. Mark

Howdy, Yeah, I need to a dryland area setup at home. I've been slacking on some projects that have to get done to get area in the garage free'd up for that. One of the other main areas I've been working on lately though is positioning... I.e. getting to where I'm going to need to be. That seems to be coming from games vs. anything else really. Plus games are fun, so I'm not going to be giving them up any time soon, even if I might add some hours of dryland practice to my weeks. :-) Mark

Howdy, I wrote this up for a group of friends from college, and though it fit here too. To make it make more sense... I live in Youngstown, OH near Pittsburgh, PA. Cranberry and Beaver County are suburbs of Pittsburgh, between Pittsburgh and Youngstown. Boardman is a suburb of Youngstown, a couple miles from where we live. Laura == my wife, Dominic == my son. :-) ----------------------------------------------------- So, a bit over a year into this "Let's play hockey for real" thing. Jan 2016 was my first Adult Skills class. One of my goals this time last year was to be on a league team. I've certainly accomplished that... I'm currently on three teams. One is the Scrubstitutes, playing in Cranberry at Baierl Ice Complex on a D1 team (about halfway in skill... They have B, C, D1, D2, and E from most to least skilled. E is full on beginner. B is "probably played Juniors or real college"-ish). Another is 'Yellow', a D level team (same approach as Baierl, except there's no division in D) that plays at Brady's run in Beaver County. Its a core group of friends/coworkers from the Air National Guard base in Pittsburgh, plus fill in folks like me. The last is Valley Insurance, a B level team (only A and B, B is the lesser skilled group) that plays close to home in Boardman Ohio. I also play in a regular old guy pickup group run by a guy named Debiec when I can, plus take an Adult Skills class (that same one I started with) with Laura. Debiec was the first group I started playing with, back in Feb/March of last year. Its a really good group of older (average age is 50+, I'm pretty sure) guys. Skill level is fairly mixed and its pickup where there's no refs, no score, etc. and if you're lesser skilled there's a reasonable chance the other guy who's way better than you will hang back a bit and give you a chance, but they still expect you to try hard, do as well as you can, etc. Teams aren't totally fixed, but they're fairly consistent with only a couple guys that switch from White to Dark and most folks staying one or the other. The best guys here are both skilled and fast, but they need to hang back and "play down" to fit in with the group so you don't run into that as much. On the lower end, you have folks where I was when I started or even slightly lower. These days I seem to fit in decently well here. I'm probably slightly below average in skill... Good enough that people don't hang back when they play me and my teammates expect me to do the right thing, bad enough that I'm in no danger of being asked to play down some. :-) I really enjoy playing with these guys mostly from the social aspect, since I know them more, plus its local. On the negative side, no refs means no faceoffs and faceoffs are fun, plus no scoreboard means you don't have that amped up "close game" thing as much. Valley Insurance is my newest league team, just started four games ago or so. Skill level here is also very mixed, ranging from a guy that just about can't skate (literally) to some of the upper level (but not "has to play down a lot") guys from Debiec. This is mostly because there are only two levels locally since Youngstown doesn't have the hockey population base that Pittsburgh does, so either you're good enough for "A" or you're not. On this team I would say I'm solidly average / perhaps a bit better than average. Our team is also undefeated at four games into the season, though all of the games were within a goal or two and have been good games. This leauge also has a 'real' score keeper with a clock that stops (everyone else I play with has a running clock), some record of player stats, etc. Been having fun here too. I talked a local friend into playing on the team, plus know some of the other guys from Debiec, run into them locally at stick 'n puck or whatever, etc. Justin, the local friend above, is the guy who took the Adult Skills class with me at RMU last January. Next on the skill level and "physical closeness" level is the Yellow team at Brady. Skill here is a pretty good match for me and I'm solidly average again, perhaps just a bit below average. Upper end of the skills isn't really higher than the B league in Youngstown, but you don't have the guys that can't skate / are just starting out, so the range of skill is compressed. This is my 2nd session with them. Another good group (I've really yet to run into anyone in adult hockey that I don't like). Last game our regular center was out and they asked me to play center (usually I play winger) and had some nice comments on how my game has improved, so that was a good ego boost. However, our team is mostly in the basement in league standings, so small blessings or whatever. Lately we tend to not win the close games, which is frustrating. Top skill level is the team I played with last night. "Yellow" again (all three league teams I play on happen to have yellow jerseys!), in the D1 group at Baierl. In this group, I'm the worst player. Skill level is still fairly compressed like with the D league at Brady, but the range is slid upwards. This is my first session with them and I'm not sure if I'll be asked back or not. I'm not awful in comparison to the group (there's another one or two guys that are similar to me, though I'd rate myself as slightly worse), but I'm clearly the "most likely guy on our team to turn the fucking puck over or miss play something". Its both nice to be in a "stretch" group like this and demoralizing at the same time. Our team seems to be solidly in the mix in terms of the other teams in the league... If we have a good game we'll likely win and if we aren't clicking we'll likely lose. Last night was a 3/3 tie that we won in an overtime shootout. The Adult skills class has been fun. I did that for two or three sessions when I started, like I mentioned. Then they stopped offering it over the summer break and I was doing other stuff. I started back up again this Jan, with a year under my belt. I did it again with a weird mix of "I want to show how much better I am than I was" coupled with "I want more hockey practice, vs. games". The class is a full hour away at the RMU Island Sports Complex at Nevile Island, plus its probably the most expensive thing I do in terms of "cost to be out there". But I like the instruction and "I can try things and not worry about failing" part of it. They split the group into Novice and Veteran. Novice is REALLY novice, with everyone able to skate forward and probably hockey stop at least a little one way, but that's about it as a floor. Veteran has more skill, but still you're talking "veteran beginners" vs. "guys that used to play in high school" or whatever. Going to my first one of this year, I was really ready to show just how much I'd learned and while I was obviously better, I also still sucked. :-) Still, there's no question I've gone from "average in the novice group" to "solidly above average in the veteran group". For the 2nd session of the RMU class, Laura is taking it with me. So the three of us head down there on Sunday nights, Laura and I go out and take the class, and Dominic hangs out on the bleachers playing games or watching Youtube or whatever. Its like roll reversal for the normal way stuff is done. :-) Laura has been having fun with it. She's been in the novice group and doing ok I think. Getting better at skating, etc. She was surprised to discover that she likes the puck handling / passing / shooting "hockey skills" part as much or more than the "power skating" part. The only downside for her is that (like nearly all Adult Hockey) its at 8pm and we don't get home until 10:30pm or 11pm or so. That's late for both her and Dominic, particularly on a school night, and it bothers her. Because of that, we don't stay for the scrimmage that happens for the last 40 minutes or so of class which is really too bad, because it would be a good way for her to see if she liked playing in a game. But that would mean getting home more like 11:30pm and she just refuses. Speaking of Dominic... We started off this season with him playing in a house league at Brady. He REALLY wanted to play in goal, so we got him setup, he did a week long goalie camp over the summer, etc. He wanted me to help coach, so I got certified and inspected and all that and was helping out. The house league is lower level than travel hockey, but its still kids that have been playing a while in some cases, still serious, etc. It never clicked with Dominic. You could see that he wasn't having that much fun. He played one "real" game, a scrimmage against another local group, and they got shellacked, something like 14 to 0. Dominic played goal the whole time and kept trying, but that game was NOT good for him. He probably let in 7 or so goals he really should have stopped, but the others were because the other team was just flat out better and the game was 80% of the time or more in our defensive zone. A month or maybe a bit more in and he was complaining about going to practice, saying he wished he wasn't playing, etc. We'd gone through something like this with baseball, and because he made a commitment to the team we made him stick it out (and then did it again the next year, after he decided to sign up and try it again, a decision that still baffles Laura and I). The result of the baseball thing is that now he HATES baseball and I seriously doubt he'll ever want to even throw a ball around. I didn't want that same thing with skating / hockey, but also didn't want it to be a "no big deal, just quit" thing either. So I came up with the idea of him spending the same time he spent playing hockey on "Dad School". I.e. he'd need to do six hours of whatever schoolwork-y stuff I picked every week. I offered him that choice and with almost no hesitation, he jumped at it. Fast forward that a few months, and Dad School was going reasonably well. Not much complaining about needing to do it, its let us work on some stuff like having my dad (former highschool math teacher) work on math with him, I used it to get him reading some books I liked as a kid (Harper Hall trilogy), etc. Meanwhile the local guy who put together the Youngstown league added a local kids program Also, since I'd been in this for a year and I'm me, I had a bunch of hockey gear I no longer used that I wanted to sell. When I put that stuff up for sale, I included a bunch of Dominic's gear, including all his goalie gear. Dominic wasn't too happy about me selling his gear. I sold some of it (the smaller of two sets of leg pads, the old catch glove he started with, goalie pants, goalie cup, etc.) He really didn't like that, and I think it started him thinking about using it more. Add to that the new local group and suddenly he wanted to try that again. :-) So now we've cut Dad School back to three hours a week along with a weekly kids skills class Saturday morning. They play cross ice on one half of the ice while a bunch of us local adult players do a stick/puck/pickup thing on the other half. He's gone twice now and seems to be liking it so far. We've talked about him (probably with me and Laura) also doing a skating class on Wednesday nights and if that happens, that'll eliminate all of the Dad School requirements. That's clearly a motivating factor for him, but this is still a step back towards interest, which makes me happy. This time around, I'm going to try and make sure he demonstrates/proves more interest before we jump into a more serious program. Anyway, back to me... I sorta described my state of the world above, but didn't talk about improvement much... I seem to be transitioning at least some from "any time I'm out there, I have a good time" to "I have to do well or I'm pissed". I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing, but I also get pretty jazzed when I feel like I contribute to a hard fought win, etc. Playing with the D1 group can be / frequently is demoralizing but equally I think I likely learn more there. Sometimes I wish I was also still playing with an E league group, so that I didn't feel like I suck all the time. Objectively, I'm certainly better than I was, but I'm wondering how much of that was getting through the step part of the learning curve in the first few months and now I'm on a shallow incline / flat area. When I think about where I was a year ago, I'm better in every way. But when I think about where I was 3 months ago or 6 months ago... Less sure I'm significantly better. One of my weaknesses is stick handling... I'm just not that great at controlling the puck under pressure. I also occasionally feel flat footed / stuck and unable to quickly put myself in the right place on the ice. I do think my situational awareness has gotten a little better lately, but this is also still a place I struggle, since a lot of it is "control the puck more unconsciously, so that you have more mental capacity to see what's happening around you and make a good play". That's especially noticeable with the D1 league because there's less time before someone is on you, but it exists in every group. My goals when I started were to have fun, get in shape, and get better. Certainly those are being met at this point. But me being me, I'm not happy unless I'm the best guy out there in whatever I think of as a "good" league... Since so far "good league" seems to mean "one where I'm one of the worst players", that's certainly setting myself up for failure. :-) Its clear that given starting hockey at age 46 I will likely never have the same skills as another guy that's my age but has been playing his whole life. But its unclear if with work I can get close enough that its good enough for me. So far, I'm seeing improvement and I want to keep trying. ---------------------------------- Mark

Howdy, 7dm2 or the original? Either way, that should be a nice upgrade. :-) What're you you using lens-wise? I've been thinking I should dust off the photo gear and see how I could do. I expect getting exposures right is a challenge with so much white & the fast motion... Mark

Howdy, That's really no better than the other guy that can't let it go. Some people are assholes. Ignore them. Mark (and yeah, sometimes I break my own rule too. :-)

Howdy, WTF. NHL.TV isn't streaming the all star skills competition or game. At least NBC is apparently broadcasting the game, but still... WTF? Mark

Howdy, Yeah, I've done the normal reset your location stuff. Also confirmed that the NHL.tv app worked without the Yonder DNS servers in place. No dice. Only thing I haven't tried is doing it from a PC instead of my xbox one. Mark

Howdy, Grrrr. NHL.TV and Yonder appear to be annoyed with each other. I really wanted to watch some hockey tonight, not play network engineer. :-( Blackouts suck. Mark

Howdy, I liked the 1st season. Hopefully someone will post up how to watch it from the US / they'll release it to Netflix or whatever. Mark

Howdy, So, I've been searching a bit and not coming up with many (any?) NHL or other "I play hockey at a high level" people using FBV... Are there some and I'm just not seeing them? Mark

Howdy, So, tried FBV for the first time. I was kicking around between 1/2" and 3/8" ROH, settling on 7/16" for the last while. I went with the 95/75 FBV profile. Fairly impressed! Even with my relative newness to the game, I can feel the difference in glide. My skate doesn't seem as "sticky" on my non-push foot. And at the same time, I seem to have as much or perhaps even a touch more edge grip when turning. Skates don't seem to dig in quite as much when stopping, at least initially, but if I consciously bend my ankle to dig them in more, that seems to work. Been out on them for two games now and the other thing that's interesting is that the edge grip doesn't seem to have changed at all over that time. So far at least, I'm a convert. I've heard that when they get dull its a little more of a "falling off a cliff" kinda thing vs. the gradual dulling I've experienced with standard ROH sharpening. We'll see how that goes. Right now I'm planning on trying to get around 5-ish ice-hours on a set of blades before sharpening, but no real clue if that's aggressive, reasonable, or too conservative. One thing that's interesting is just how flat the blade looks. All the drawings you see online are so exaggerated that I wasn't really prepared for just how completely flat / featureless the edge is, but it makes sense when you think that the last number of 75 is a height difference of only .00075"! :-) Mark

Howdy, Yeah, yesterday when I posted they had both 7/7.5 and 8/8.5, but I see they're out now. I was pretty happy to see them, as I hadn't found normal steel anywhere in the 7/7.5 size. Mark

Howdy, I _think_ this is a pretty good deal for Mako folks? CXN holder w/runner for $30, plus 25% off at HockeyMonkey. http://www.hockeymonkey.com/catalog/product/view/id/140459 Mark

Howdy, My time at the local rink tonight would have made a great advertisement for Sparx. :-) Local rink guy I'm friendly with (and remain so) sharpened my skates but edges were _way_ off. Like, very easily visible to the eye. He didn't see it before he gave them back. Not adversarial and he was kinda embarrassed when I pointed it out. Then he tried to cut them again, without much better results. During this whole process, it was clear that he could do the job when everything worked right, but didn't have enough experience to recognize/fix other problems. He's a nice guy (I'd say "kid", but he's probably in his 30's, so that mostly shows that I'm old I think... :-) and wanted to do the right thing, but just didn't have the experience / knowledge. My guess is that something was wonky with the holder but ?? Anyway, making a long story short, my skates are still up there and the old guy that knows more will cut them tomorrow. On most levels, no harm, no foul. Sure a little steel is gonna be gone that really shouldn't be, but hey whatever. But I'm still wishing I had my own sharpener (absent that whole $900 to buy one thing :-). Mark

Howdy, Anyone used either of these? I wouldn't mind owning an edge height checker, but $100 for a BR100 seems a little silly after having used one at the local rink. Mark

Howdy, Kicked in the head by a student in the classroom? WTH? Mark

Howdy, I don't have the experience lots of you guys do, but I really like the Warrior Pro bag I ended up with after going through a couple cheap used bags. The only thing I'd change on it would be to change the straight zipper through the middle to a "flap" style top opening. Mark

Howdy, Is there a reason the skate clamp can't be wider, if mildly bent blades are a common problem? Mark

Howdy, Interesting. I'll give it a shot. I tried one of these at my last old guy hockey: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GF28UFO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It "worked" in the sense that I had way less sweat issues but after having it on for a while it felt like someone was driving an icepick into my head. Just too much pressure. I may try adjusting my helmet even bigger (I put it out another notch-ish) and give it another go, but I think the real answer is contacts. Mark