Kgbeast

It is quite likely that the consumables is the name of the game here. At the cost of the Sparks machine and the number of potential sales, it is not an exceedingly lucrative model, unless you factor in a pretty fast going consumables. This has to be a printer model to be interesting - give away the printers at basicaly cost, then make the real money on selling ink cartridges. This model is great and generally works great for both parties. Very smart. Doubt there is any reason to venture into pro market. Sparks is in a nice niche in home user market with a product that is very unappealing to compete against as Sparks has managed to set the standards high while price is pretty low.

Good call on his behalf. As far if he is the same or not, hard to say, but he is still a powerhouse, very fast, sniper and a one of the best danglers, and can drop gloves with the best of them. If he comes back next year, he should be able to put together a nice highlight reel.

Not sure about healthy scratch. He has 87 points in 17-18 season, second in KHL. Still a sniper and a dangler. Pretty fast and pretty furious. CBJ could use his size and experience. That said, it makes sense for him to sit out in KHL for one more year. In 2018, we will be an unrestricted free agent with no ties to Devils. He will be able to go with anyone who sign him, without any hoops to jump through. Another huge thing for Kovalchuck is to go and play in Winter Olympics which is his last chance. Plus since NHL will not be there in any capacity, it will take a miracle on ice for Russia not to take gold. I think Kovy will be really looking at that. Next year, at 35, with his experience and level of play, he can have a very good run in the right team, so he can bag a Stanley as well. If it was me, I would have gone to Olympics, then next year take a low contract from an NHL team that has good chance at the cup. Lots of changes in NHL this year, so it is pretty difficult to see who is what. This is another reason to wait.

... phone double post

IMO Looks unbalanced. Huge top tapers down to a dress shoe toe. VH never was an easy on the eye skate, but this one is pretty off putting. The vulcanized rubber look is not my cup of tee, neither is the shiny fiberglass hardhat looking heel. Is this a hinged top for forward flex kind of design? That rear view reminds me an actual skiboot sonehow.

Very well. I missed that until now... better yet(for me) one of the likely new homes for him is Columbus. Looks like Kovy was "getting familiar" with the area, whatever that means.

Noise in Russian hockey press suggesting that Kovalchuck will start 2017-2018 season in NHL.

It is pretty hard with goalies. Ferguson is not a prodigy, but is 3rd in WHL with saving percentage (922) which is pretty good out of a couple of dozen other goalies in the league. Even 194th pick is not that bad for a goalie. His NHL ranking is 8 out of 31 for NA which I think is pretty high.

...well, they also got high prospect goalie. But yeah. Did not see that coming.

OB is one of my faves, and I am looking forward to see him play. He tends to drop his eyes on the puck just after picking it up and kind of tunnels puck to target, be it a net or possible pass destinations. Imo this leaves him less aware of surrounding, opening him to hits and takeaways. Panarin is rarely gets hit and is very hard to take the puck away from. Other than that they have similar skills at scoring and creating plays. I was not saying OB does not know how to protect himself, it just he does not do it as well as Panarin. As for Kane boosting Panarin. I see that Panarin kind of takes a back seat when Kane is on the ice and instead of trying to score and create plays, he is more of a expecting Kane to do that. Lose of that connection and move to a different club should prompt him to be more independent and be the player he can be. But we will see. Jackets have pretty complicated raster I think.

Just noticed some welcome by me changes to the CBJ raster besides addition of Artemi Panarin. Vitaly Abramov - explosive forward who has lots of puck-handling skill, beautiful skating, and heart of a lion to go in the thick of it. A QMJHL graduate who have been a menace of the offensive zone for a couple of years now. He is a smaller guy and as of now has not shown lots of defensive value, but offensively is quite spectacular. Provided he is not intimidated and outplayed by NHL level, he should bring a slew of memorable highlights. Seeing him on the raster is a bit surprise, but it also shows CBJs willingness to give a shot to someone with a great promise. I hope Abramov will hit the NHL ice running and play his way out of being demoted to AHL as it often happens in situations like this. Oliver Bjorkstrandt - is a guy who showed lots of promise, but was not able to deliver in his start in NHL. He had to prove himself in AHL for a season or so. As anyone who watched him last season noticed, he showed worthy talent and an ability to score. create plays, and do all that in a quite spectacular manner last season. Love to see him on the raster as a proper part of the CBJ team. Those are some good offensive end gains, unfortunately, Jackets have not scored a great deal in the defensive area. So unless they do some more trading to reinforce the blue line, it will be left as it was last season with perhaps a chance of Gabriel Carlsson improving from his rather modest production. Perhaps, once again, Bobrovski will be able to compensate for any lacking in this area, which can get him another Vezina and Hart nomination next year.

I was delighted to see that Ivan Lodnia got drafted by Wild. He is our local, SoCal product. Born into hockey. Probably learned to skate before he learned to flush toilet. I am happy for his father who dedicated his life to the sport. Job well done! I have watched Ivan play a little bit and he is quite a treat. Now, I am adding Minnesota Wild to my NHL watch list.

"What's a YUOT?".... love that movie, going to watch it tonight now that you brought it up :).

Salary Caps are not my money to count, so I do not really care. Skill wise Panarin is excelent. I think Kane's shadow was holding him back, nor he needs Kane to set him up. He can be setup by anybody. He is a heads up player from birth and protects himself verywell (unlike Bjorkstrand for example) His big weakness is that he is a bit timid. Not a fighter, nor a hitter. He is also pretty small. But (the new) Torts seems to have a touch to get players like that to shine. I am totally expect Panarin to become as prominent as Atkinson if not more so. I can't wait for the season to start.

First, as I came across "Saad back to Chicago" headline, I was "you've got to be kidding me", but when articles opened up, I did the yes thing in my mind. While it is sad to loose Saad, I feel that Panarin is a much better fit to Jackets. Not sure how Blackhawks will do out of this, but I am pretty excited to see Panarin in blue. I think he will do exceptionally good this season if he stays.

Yes, if they want to establish themselves as a major brand, they have to go with their own holder. Selling you VH holders as part of the package is another $100 to their revenue. Selling you Bauer holders is $100 in direct competitors pocket. They are nice enough offer you just boots even though selling you complete skates would have help them more. We also can not expect VH to remain the same as before, they will change a lot little by little. As demand grows, they will need to crank them skates out the door at a much higher pace which will require some streamlining. So I think the next thing that will be going, is the ability of you sending them your old pair of Levis for a custom trim options.

... a theoretical claim that is hard to prove or disprove. There plenty of pro and against opinions on this. What does this mean "improves responsiveness"? And if it does, by how many percents? The fastest and most agile are not in one piece boot as of yet.

Older VH had kind of "organic" look if you know what i mean with the holder flat flanges squashed against the rounded bottom of the boot. This "black plastic piece" appears to be a kind of square peg to round hole adapter most likely as an attempt to improve the look... IMO a failed attempt at that. Or perhaps this helps to automate and speed up the holder mounting process. They probably had to heat up the holders before they could crimp it like that without breaking something. Can not see on the pic how they mitigated the front "problem". Do they have a spacer there as well? Well hopefully as a next step they will make the bottom flat (ala Supertacks). Then if they loose the dimples on Step holder, we will see a skate that is much easier on the eye. Then again, this is a hockey skate, does it really need to be pretty?

I think they would look fine if they get rid of these dimples in the front and back.

Well regardless if they understand it or not, they will be getting a safer helmet... Once again not SAFE helmet, but safer. Without rating, they will just get one that looks like "my little pony" or "r2d2". I think the world is a better place when there is something that can sway parents from buying those :-).

When I was making this comment, it was purely to defend VT test validity specifically to the areas that they test. It would be reduction of concussion due to impact such as fall on ice or being checked into the boards as well as general impact resistance of the helmet. Face-mask and chin strap is not a factor as it applies to the specific test conducted by VT. Marka for example does not appear to be discounting the importance of the proper fit. All he says, that he would grab the highest VT score and try it on, If it does not fit right, he would sling that off and try if the next one down in VT scoring would fits better. And so on, until it is a good fit helmet, yet still with VT score. I do not see that this method of selecting a helmet is flawed in any way. I see selecting of helmet purely based on fit and disregarding results of any safety testing as more flawed. I am pretty sure you can find a helmet that fits great but has zero protection against concussion when you bounce you head off the ice. That said, I find VT test kind of like... For example if a test is performed for effects of a 50 yard shot from a 308 caliber rifle through a stack of 200 pages of copier paper vs. a stack of 2 empty pizza boxes; and it is concluded that 200 pages of paper offer a better protection against the bullet, the results of the test are not wrong, but it also does not mean that either object is adequate to be used as a bullet-proof vest. However, one can actually use this test as a bases for grabbing a pack of printer paper instead of a pizza to protect them selves from a 9mm handgun, and it actually can save the ones life depending of a distance and angle of the shot. So while VT is not testing for everything under the sun, they do gather, what I feel, an adequate amount of data for one to make some basic estimations of which helmet is safer. After all, it is not all about hard drives head first into the boards and bouncing heads on the ice, sometime it is just a stray wrist shot to the back of the head. Perhaps the difference is remaining sharp in the game vs, being a bit loopy for a few minutes. Hey, different strokes for different folks.

I am pretty sure he is talking shape of the head not size. In other words, size of helmet is right, it fits tight and does not move around... just a bit uncomfortable because it has higher pressure points here and there. In this case the helmet will protect as well as the same helmet that follows the head shape a bit better. Since dummy head does not feel pain and discomfort, it is good to go for testing less that perfectly fitting helmets and results would be valid. All they need to make sure is that they get the size of the helmet right.

Looks like the guy or gal did not like this at all. One skate and throwing them out for 30 bucks with steel? I wish this was my size...

Quality of product does not depend on country where it is made but on people it is made by. You can find poor quality in USA and Canada. All it takes is an inconsiderate management that breeds not caring work force. In case of Graf Canada, in last 3 or 4 years of their existance, quality of product produced in Canada was often crapier than of the lines made in China. I hope people would put that behind by now. Graf Canada is dead and gone, people who ran it into the ground are no longer associated with Graf and Claude Lemieux is finally properly retired and exhibits no efforts to get involved in any of the hockey equipment manufacturing efforts. So we should take a breather an move on. Discussions like in this thread are targeted not at a company that makes the skates, but at an assumption that somehow a tarnished company's name will forever plague the quality of products produced under it. If Vaughn, would have changed the name on these product from Graf to Vortex or some shit like that, their products would have been looked at with fair level of optimism such as the case with Verbero. I do not know of the quality level, nor technology, or how long they will last. Until someone buys a pair of Vaughn produced pair of Graf skates (foreign or domestic), play with them for 2-3 month, and then comeback here and writes his review, all this talk is just fumes.

I do not get how those are different from the Tuuks or whatever? Do they do something that other holders do not. Flex somewhere or what?