VegasHockey

I imagine taking a shot to the chest with those DC9 and my rib cage collapsing, lol

You can buy a lot of beer with $40-$50 bucks if you go to Costco.

I think that is the key point here. These skates are in terrible condition from these player's lack of sharpening which is sucking up more cycles than usual. Our store charges a set fee for sharpening but if you bring in some skate with steel that looks like you've been running around a parking lot with your skates on we are going to charge you extra to get them back into a usable condition. It's not unrealistic for shops to charge $15-$35 or more if the steel requires substantial time, cross grinding, and many times is not even and has to be matched again due to people with poor experience doing the sharpenings. I was recently in Chicago for work and went into a pretty well known local store and they have no problem charging customers $25+ for sharpening if it looks like you've been doing this to your steel:

I think it all depends. 25 sharpens at $10 a sharpen would be $250 bucks and if the ring costs him $60 thats a pretty decent return. Yes, you could buy a Wissota or some other machine for $1200 and charge less per sharpen but if you aren't skilled you're going to have a heck of a time giving people a consistent sharpen which could lead to not having return customers.

I feel the same about the Vapor and Supreme ADV. The sticks were too light and the blade felt too stiff. I think if they added 15-20 grams back and maybe went with a more dampened blade, like a Nexus, the stick would have been great.

I skate 5-7 times weekly, about 10-14 hour total, and sharpen my skates once a week with a single pass. I do however skate on a very flat hollow compared to most others. If I change my hollow, as some rinks have harder ice than others, I usually do two passes.

I would imagine the fact that you have to reinforce the area around the cut out the blade with a cutout wouldn't actually be any lighter than a full blade.

I did notice that Marner uses an XC9 without an insert, it seems to have an XX-Stiff A series blade. Though most of the pro stock ones for sale online still have the insert and are basically just standard XC9 sticks without a warranty. However, his new AX9... Now that is quite an interesting stick.... Our store purchased a bunch of pro stock AX9 sticks from TRUE and here are a few variations of the Marner AX9. The biggest difference was one weighs in significantly less than the others, 368 grams vs 390 grams. The spec sheet doesn't show any difference between any of them though, which is strange.

It does, however, the J clips dont sit properly without spacers and it squishes the cage.

Found a good pic showing how Marner doesn't lace the top eyelet. Makes me wonder if the next trend is to start making skates with a much lower cut front fascia to aid in forward flexion while still keeping the sides tall to provide stability.

Oh, those are the stock insoles that usually come with the CCM customs. Just a really thick black insole, no arch or anything, and a white CCM logo.

Yeah, had the same issue with a helmet and had to go to Home Depot to buy longer screws. We now keep a small box of them in store for the TRUE helmets. The CCM and Bauer clear face masks also need longer screws than are supplied because the plastic brackets are thicker, so we needed them for this as well. Note: I let TRUE know this about the screws so I hope they will make an update at some point to provide longer screws with the helmet.

Pic?

Try putting very thin plastic spacers between the J clip and the helmet.

Here are some better pics that show the cage fits fine. There is roughly a fingers gap between my chin and the chin cup with my mouth closed.

In Scottsdale, AZ it rarely gets cold enough I need a heated garage. 😉

I have a whole setup for my personal unit in my garage, all my extra sets of steel, hones, oils, and such. Lots of skate sharpening goodies 🙂

1: The difference is Sparx you pay less upfront for the machine but pay more over time with the rings, the Pro Sharp consumable rings last much longer. I did the match and if you keep both units they end up costing the same after 2 years assuming you only use one ROH. If you are using various ROH for different players and such the Pro Sharp is significantly more expensive. 2: Yes, I have done blind back-to-back testing in our store with Sparx and Pro Sharp portable units and 95% of players cannot tell the difference. I think it has a lot to do with the prep prior to sharpening and then finishing after the sharpening. 3: Yes, they are both user-friendly and fairly simple to adjust 4: Sparx warranty is much better than Pro Sharp in my experience 5: None that I can speak to. 6: I would say the Sparx can be used anywhere, living room, garage, wherever, it has a built-in filter and is a closed cycle system. I still would not use it in my kitchen though as there has to be some debris that escapes through the top of the unit. Better to be safe than sorry. The Pro Sharp has much more debris though, I would recommend using it with a vacuum attached to help control the metal shavings, based on this I would not recommend that to be used in your home amnd only use it in a garage or some other space.

I've used every single ROH and FIRE and I seem to always go back to 1" ROH on all of my standard width steel, but on my Flare steel I like the 3/4" FIRE

Because you said the following above which was implying RFID and NFC are different. At least, thats how I read it. No biggie.

I remember these. Loved them.

The skate is so adjustable once heat is applied that you can pretty much remove all negative space that you will never be able to get your foot into the boot. There was a player recently who we fitted and he hatesnall negative space in his skates, likes them to fit basically too small, kind of like Paul Coffey. He had us heat them extra long and wrap them so incredibly tight his toes ended up bruised. I think he is crazy but that's exactly the way he likes his skates to fit and TRUE skates were the only ones he has been able to accomplish this same fit. Also, the reduced facing I requested had nothing to do with volume adjustment.

Come on guys 😉 RFID is the process by which items are uniquely identified using radio waves, and NFC is a specialized subset within the family of RFID technology. Specifically, NFC is a branch of High-Frequency (HF) RFID, and both operate at the 13.56 MHz frequency.

That would make sense as the PS100 is significantly more expensive so they make more money up front and less per ring vs the retial model which they sell for less but make money from the subscription service of people buying rings. The good news though is the ES100 and PS100 are the same units 100% excluding the vacuum system and software/firmware.

They are exactly the same, the packaging is different and the NFC codes apparently are different as well.