puckpilot

Glad things worked out for your kid. Sad that that "coach" doesn't get hoisted up on his petard. That's a silly way to run a team at that level.

Honestly, there's nothing to be gained from playing out the last 6 seconds. But there's plenty to lose. In those types of games, people aren't in the best of moods. All it takes is for one person to do something to aggravate the other team, which can be anything from a dirty look to taking a comment the wrong way, and it's a brew-ha-ha. It's better to sacrifice those precious 6 seconds and get everyone to their beer therapy sooner.

I could be totally off base, but to me it sounds like you feel like you're giving everything you got to get the win, sacrificing the body, showing up to every game even when you may not feel up to it, but it doesn't sound like the rest of the team is as committed. It sounds like you're the guy, or one of the few guys, pulling the cart, while the rest are taking a free ride and waving to the pretty girls on the sidelines and getting the smiles. Do any of your teammates come up to you during or after the game and say thanks for bailing them out or thanks for keeping us in it? Cause it sucks to be underappreciated. I've been on teams where I work my ass off forechecking, backchecking, lift sticks to save goals, spring guys left and right by threading passes through multiple defenders, but nobody says a damn thing unless I'm on the score sheet. (I'll leave the gripes about missed assists for another time) While the guys who are seagulling all night, taking 2.5 minute shifts, and are like minus 4, get the nice game because they scored a couple. Stuff like that makes me not want to play, or at the very least it makes me not want to care. On the other hand, I've been on teams were everyone works their butts off, win or lose, and we may lose a lot, but there's a we'll-get-them-next-time type of attitude. It never feels like you're the only one that gives a crap and that makes it still fun to go to the rink. My 2 cents

I wear 7.5-8 shoes and size 4.5 skates. When I got my current skates, I came down from a size 5. Took me a little while to notice that I was more unstable and my foot was sliding out from under me with my underpush in my cross overs. Blamed it on user error. So spent 6 months working to correct the issue with little improvement. Then last April, I tried changing my profile to a 12' +1, and it made the world of difference. I'm in a 13' +1 profile now, and after 6 months, barely notice any loss of agility. Only notice the positives now.

Shooting a golfball is not the same as shooting a puck. If you try to develop your mechanics this way, there's a good chance you are going to develop some bad habits. It's a lot easier to get under a golfball and lift it than it is a puck. If you want to take your shooting pad somewhere, just take it to a park with a flat surface and a chain link fence and fire pucks at that. Tennis courts are nice. And if you're ambitious, you can even bring a net.

I encourage you to stick to your guns. The good news is you know it isn't just you or your kid. And at least your kid knows you got his back, and you know he still loves hockey. Don't know what's going to happen as you move up the food chain, but the nuclear option is probably being really frank about the coach with the higher ups, and if that falls on deaf ears, tell them either you kid gets moved or your kid sits out. Because sending a kid into a crappy situation like that is not a healthy option. Also, I know this is going to sound sneaky, but I'd start recording phone conversations if possible, just so you don't get into a he-said-she-said situation.

Ummmm wtf is with that coach? To give a different view of things, my nephew is a couple years ahead of your kid, and he's on the rep A team, with paid coaches, which I believe is about as high as you can go. All last year I took him to practice at least once a week--he has three a week on top of games--and I saw kids mess up drills all the time, and I've never seen or heard of the coach yell at a kid for doing so. If a kid keeps messing up the drill, the coach stops and explains it to the kid. If they still don't get it, the coach has them sit out and watch those who do understand run through a few times. That usually fixes things. Usually at the end of practice, the coach has a mini game drill as a treat for the kids to keep things fun. Though, I've heard my nephew talk about bag skates after games in which they didn't listen to the coach and didn't do well. But my nephew hasn't ever complained about having to going to the rink, so I'm sure bag skate doesn't mean what it typically means. After games, the coach has a private talk with the team before parents are allowed in. Regardless of win or lose, I've never gone into the dressing room and felt that the kids were beat down. They're always laughing, even if they blew a 4 goal lead in the third. I don't know what your options are, but if you can shift your kid to another team, that might be a good thing. When my nephew was your son's age, the focus was more on skills development so everyone got to play different positions. There weren't any systems. Now this isn't to say, I didn't see other teams play systems, but I didn't see the point. Any way, my 2 cents. It's worth what you paid. And best of luck to you and your kid.

FYI, there are 55 flex intermediates. Also, how tall are you? I'm 5'5 and I use 52" junior sticks. Some of them I add plugs to. Some are just perfect uncut. Just recently with True and with Bauer's 2N pro, the 50 flex junior sticks are made long. True's sticks are 54" and the new 2N pro is 53". Generally intermediate sticks are around 57" uncut. In addition with the 2N, the blade size and shaft dimensions are the same as an intermediate stick. As far as I know, this is the only junior stick that's like this. The rest have smaller shaft dimensions. Some significantly smaller, others, like CCM only slightly.

It's all personal preference. But there's always give and takes. A lower lie may help you keep your blade flatter, but it may make it more difficult to get your weight over the stick to take a shot. Etc. With that said, there's a simple solution to getting all of your blade on the ice without changing your lie or the length of your stick. Simply rotate your wrist and close the blade face. When you catch a pass, you really don't want your blade to be completely vertical. You want to close the blade and cup it. My 2 cents.

Was at stick and puck today and saw some guys wearing VH skates. One of them had their laces wrapped around the ankles, strangling the outside of the boot. I wanted to cry. :(

In terms of arches, from my experience, the Nexus and Supremes are quite similar. I really don't have much of an arch, and when I was last shopping for skates, these were the two skates I narrowed it down to. The differences is that the Nexus has more volume, so more space in the toe box, the fore foot, and the heel. If the Supremes work for you, you're not missing anything with the Nexus. Also, if I were to guess, CCM Tacks won't work for you. When I tried them on, it was like my arches were sitting on top of pyramids. I didn't even have to tie them up to know they weren't for me.

I'm in the same sized steel as you, and for the first time in 30 plus years of my hockey life, I got my skates profiled. I'm on size 4.5 N9000s, and I was running stock LS3 on stock profile, with a 3/8ths hollow. I followed Nicholas G's recommendation of a 12' single radius to start with. He also recommended a neutral pitch, but I went with a +1 and 5/8ths hollow. I specifically bought new LS3 steel to experiment on, because I'm in the middle of playoffs right now and wanted to be able to turn back if I had to. One of my biggest issues was my underpush slipping out on me when I tried to drive into it. Always thought it was user error, but after a few minutes on my profiled steel, I knew I made the right decision. It felt like every aspect of my skating had levelled up. For 4.5 hours I was trying everything from stop-starts to tight turns to one-foot slaloms, but most of all, I was working the crossovers. It all seemed to be clicking. I was able to push things so hard on turns and stop-starts, one of my laces broke. After 4.5hrs, I still didn't want to leave the rink because I was so excited about trying stuff just to see if I could do it. I'm usually a center but from time-to-time I fill in at defense. One of the things that I'd dread was the forward stop transitioning into the backward's crossover. It was always 50/50 whether the inside leg would slip out from under me. With the new profile, my leg wasn't slipping, and the only time I blew a tire was when I was trying to see how far I could push before it blew. For me, I didn't notice any detriment to my agility or turns. I think it might be in part to me feeling steadier on crossovers and hard turns. Or maybe it's because of the small runners. I'm liking it so much, I'm considering going up to a 13' radius, and maybe in time, I'll consider something more complex. Now, this isn't to say that I'm suddenly Connor McDavid. Not even close. I'm just saying that before, parts of my skating seemed to be stagnant. I wasn't making any progress no matter how much I practised or how much I studied technique. But making this adjustment feels like it pushed me free of that stagnation, and now, doors to being better are open. Any way my 2 cents. It's worth what you paid for it.

I've been mulling over changing the profile in my skates. This is an area that I've paid zero attention to, so I was wondering if someone could give me some recommendations. Right now I'm in LS3 with stock profiling with a 3/8 hollow. I'm in Nexus N9000s so I'm assuming they're 9' or 10' radius. One of the issues I'm running into now is the under-push on my crossovers. It's slipping out on me a bit when I try to drive into it and extend out, and I'm losing power and stability. Now, over the last while, I've been assuming it's user error. I'm older, less flexable, and a few years ago I got sick and lost a good chunk of muscle. But I've been really focused working on that for the last few months, youtube videos studying technique, hip stretches, one leg squats, and hours and hours and hours of ice time just working my edges and crossovers with the top three eyelets undone, but I can't seem to make any progress. So now, I'm wondering if it could be my skates. I'm 175lbs, and I'm in size 4.5 skates, so I'm wondering if it could be an issue involving not enough blade on the ice or rather not enough of a flat. I'm not sure if a smaller runner has less of a flat than a larger runner with the same radius. While googling, I found a rule of thumb calculation that said if you take your weight in kg and divided by 6.28 which is 2Pi, it will give you the ball park of what your profile radius should be. My calculation comes up with a 13' radius, which seems a bit crazy. Any way, any recommendations/suggestions are welcome.

Hahhah. A high level player on one of my teams says that eating a banana helps with this. Something in the banana makes your bowels tighten up so uhhh... less sloshing in around. I find my trigger is having a little too much liquid before or during the game.

Can't help you with the insoles, but I got a small trick for the blister in the mean time. Just take a strip of duct tape and place it over the skin on the area where the blister forms. At the very least, it will reduce the size and severity of the blister. Best cast, it will prevent the blister from forming. I've even use this for a preexisting blisters in the past. I find it reduces the pain when I skate, and prevents it from getting worse. BUT, oh boy, if you're not careful, taking it off can be painful.

Yeah, I agree. When a guy shows up wearing old, worn out gear, they're usually the ones to watch out for. They're usually the ones skating circles around everyone else. As for what you witnessed, yeah, F those guys. Their moms and pops need to bend them over and show them some old-time corporal punishment. Or maybe someone needs to go into the corner with one of them and take a stomp down on their high end stick.

I find that with new skates, it takes a lot more effort to close the area around the ankle. I found as they break in, it becomes easier, but then again, I have less of a reliance on lateral support from the skate, so what's good support for me may not be enough for someone else. I sometimes train without tying the top three eyelets. One thing I used to do was use two sets of laces for each skate. What I mean by this is I would have my bottom eyelets threaded with one lace, and then I would thread the top two or three eyelets with a second lace. This separated the skate lacing into two zones. I could keep the bottom of the skate snug but comfortable, and if I needed to, I could really yank on the top lacing to close the boot for more lateral support without crushing my forefoot or instep.

I did a rough test on how much my gear weighs a little while back by putting it on and stepping on a scale. I then took it off and weighed myself again. The gear weighed around 20lbs. To the OP, there's a difference between being able to do something during practice and being able to do it during a game and at game speed. During practice, for the most part, you're free of distractions. No worry about someone stepping up to give you a bump. You can focus on doing your skating stuff. But during a game, you have to worry about puckhandling, opposing players, where you're positioned, etc., on top of just skating. IMHO, to incorporate something new into your game, you have to practice it until you can execute it with barely a thought. Most of it should be drilled in so it's all instinctual. During a game you should be focused on playing the game, not consciously thinking about executing what ever skating move you want to do.

For me, it's less about eating. Don't get me wrong, some carbs and/or a little something something a couple of hours before does me some good. BUT for me, the most important thing is getting a nice warm up before I hit the ice. Get the blood flowing, muscles moving, etc. I try to get to the rink at least 45 min before a game--idealy and hour. I do some stickhandling with a ball, and then I do some foot work, cariokas, a few lunges, jumping jacks anything that gets my feet moving, so I get a light sweat and can feel my heart pumping.. Five minutes of warm up on the ice is not enough for me. With that limited time, the engine is cold and definitely not ready to go.

I got the QX on release day. I was using a Super Tacks 2.0 and compared to that the QX blade felt definitely softer. Heck, the whole stick felt a bit soft. But CCM has IMHO one of the stiffest, if not the most stiff, blades and shafts on the market. But after a few ice times fooling around with the QX, I liked it more and more. Yeah, the blade doesn't have as much pop as say the Super Tacks 2.0, but I find I can shoot just as hard if not harder. And the blade doesn't affect my accuracy at all. Definitely doesn't feel like its opening up.

If I sound hostile, that's not my intent to anyone. I'm just trying to be as clear as I can and stay on point, which I guess can lead to things sounding curt and short. If you're picking up hostility, then totally my bad. I'll try to pay a little more attention the tone in my posts. The only thing I'm interested in are the points being brought up. Nothing personal should be involved. First, I'm not saying that doing hockey drills is going to build you into some sort of muscled monster. I'm saying in order to do certain drills/movements properly in hockey you need a prerequisite amount of muscle/strength/ what ever you want to call it. That's all. And IMHO a lot of people don't have that when they're starting off. Second, there are noticeable attributes to a hockey player, forearms, groins, and calves. Now are these attributes developed exclusively by hockey? No. But people who have played a long time will have these attributes. Three, I never said anything about hockey skill or ability to play hockey. All I've been talking about is the ability to execute a hockey drill/movement properly. You can have really good hockey players who can't do certain powerskating drills, and you can have players who can do every powerskating drill on the planet properly that stink at hockey. Like I said, this has nothing to do with having muscles out the wazzzoo. It's about having enough muscle in your legs to do something like say a one foot, outside edge stop at game speed. I don't believe that anyone off the street has the prerequisite strength to do that. They need to build up to it, learning technique and building strength. And here's the rub, I never said the primary benefit was to build muscle tissue. All I've been saying was pretty much what you said in your first sentence there. In any skating drill you do, you need a certain amount of strength to perform it. Repetition of that drill along with enough stress put on your muscles while doing it will do two things, improve technique and strength. Just because someone has skated for a while doesn't mean they've developed all the muscles they'll need for all drills, especially if they don't practice. Everyone is different, so it doesn't make sense to make blanket statement like this. It's like saying all Canadians are good at hockey. Just one look at my game and that's disproved. So after all that practice nobody developed any of their muscles. That being able to take a hockey turn sharper at speed has nothing to do with strength. It's all technique. That doesn't sound right to me. A fat Drew Doughty in his draft year IMHO was still very strong when compared to someone off the street. If skating doesn't develop strength, then where did all his speed and strength come from before his draft year? This is a tricky thing to call because he grew up playing hockey. The demands of hockey were placed on his body at an early age. Did his body develop to fit the demands of hockey, or would he have had the same strength if he didn't play hockey, 20% body fat or not? How are you defining skating ability? If it's more of a big picture thing involving pucks and game situations and putting all together, then that's not what I'm talking about. All I'm talking about is for a specific drill you will need a perquisite amount of strength to execute it. And in executing that drill at a certain intensity, you will develop enough strength to be more proficient at it, as in being able to execute it at game speed. You will not gain a body builders physique from simply skating. You will gain enough to do what you need to do. After this point, I think I'll just be repeating myself. Agree with me or not, I've laid out my points. Feel free to rebut them. Before I go, I'd just like to make it clear, I consider this a discussion. I don't take it personal, and I hope nobody else does either. If anything reads as hostile, again, that's not my intent, and I'll apologise for that.

You do realise that when you do hockey drills you're developing your muscles right? And I never said one is more applicable than the other. You're just not processing my words correctly. In my initial post that triggered all this I said drills are basically muscle building exercises. And then In my next post I said muscle and coordination go hand and hand. Let me ask you something. What does weight lifting, stick handling and skating drills all have in common? They're all repetitive actions. What happens when you repeat an motion over and over and stress the muscles while you do that motion? You build muscle. In weight lifting the stress applied are the weights. In stick handling the stress is the weight of stick and puck. In skating the stress is applied by the body's weight when you're changing direction while travelling at a certain velocity. Now tell me. Where my thinking is wrong here?

Muscle and coordination work hand in hand. One without the other will get you now where. If you have the right muscles developed, you'll get further faster, but most people don't have the muscle, because skating uses muscles that we don't normally depend on a whole lot or use them in ways that aren't like running and walking. Ask an average person to get into a deep hockey stance and walk around holding that stance for a few minutes. I bet their thighs will be burning within 30 seconds. With these prospects, how long did it take for them to figure out the drill and execute it correctly? My guess, not too long. But even if they couldn't execute the drill, just because someone can skate at a certain level doesn't mean they've developed all the muscles they'll ever need to do every drill in the world. Also could you define smallest and weakest and what you mean by skate just fine? I'm short and have the upper-body strength of an infant, but my leg strength is pretty good. I push players way taller and heavier off pucks all the time. Does that make me weak or strong? Does that make those bigger players weak or strong? If strength is so insignificant, why is it that when I lost all that muscle, I couldn't skate worth a damn. I've been skating for over thirty years, but once that muscle was gone, I couldn't do a one foot slalom, which I could do for ages. When I tried, my foot would wobble and buckle. It was the same for every aspect of skating. Forwards or backwards crossovers forget it. Every time I leaned onto edges and tried to push off with any meaningful amount of power, my skate would wobble, buckle, or slip. My brain didn't forget how to do these things. The only thing that changed was muscle mass. Funny thing was as soon as I regained enough muscle, I could suddenly do all these things again, most of the drills without ever having practised in between. The thing I did was go back to basics and just do all the simple drills they teach you when you're learning to skate, things like basic c-cuts. I used these things to regaining my strength. And once i had that strength, things started to fall back into place. For another example, I had a friend who was a competitive biker. Never skated in his life. One day in his mid-twenties, he decided to pick up speed skating. Within a year, not only was he pretty good, he was good enough that the Taiwanese national team was looking at him. How did he get so good so fast? IMHO it was because he had the right muscle strength, so all he had to do was work on technique. One thing I see at the rink all the time is people executing what look like "proper" c-cuts, but there's no power behind it. They don't push into the ice. They just kind of glide. So they get nowhere, because they're not developing strength. I see the same thing with things like crossovers. One foot goes over the other and they push off a little, but there's really no power behind it because they don't have the strength to get down in a proper crouch and they don't have the strength to hold an edge to really lean into that under push.

If I don't mind me adding a couple of things to that list for people learning on their own time. - at the beginning keep it simple. You'll get the most mileage out of the simple basic drills like single leg c-cuts. Get a good handle on them before moving up. Trying to jump ahead to the more advanced stuff before you're ready will only gain you bad habits, a poor stride, and a lot of wasted time. - keep in mind all drills are basically muscle building drills. Often the reason someone can't execute an advanced manoeuvre is because they don't have the strength to do it, not because they aren't coordinated enough or don't understand the mechanics. These are two of the things I learned a few years ago when health issues robbed me of 20lbs of muscle. I'd been skating since I was a kid, but once that muscle was gone, I could barely stand up on my skates . Had to literally teach myself to skate again.

Ditto on the wide head. I went with a Warrior Krown. It's adjustable in all four directions. No more headaches during or after games. I think at least one other brand has a helmet that can adjust in all directions, but I don't recall which.