puckpilot

My feet are really small, so I'm in junior skates. There are no skates that fit me properly, while still passing the pencil test, unless I go custom. I dealt with lace bite on and off for quite a long time, while trying all the solutions under the sun. Hands down best solution I found were Option B skate straps. http://www.chooseoptionb.com/ They're ugly as damnation, but they work like a charm. My skates fit like a dream now. No pain or pressure anywhere. Because of the way they're installed, they give the boot about 1/2 cm more height.

If it performs like or is similar to blade tape, then IMHO, its a decent deal for $5 per tape job. Blade tape lasts forever for me. And if this is more durable and provides similar grip, this is will definitely be something I'll use. Can't wait to hear everyone's opinions.

I wonder how this is different than blade tape? Don't get m wrong. I love blade tape. I still use it, but it's hardly lighting the world on fire.

Up next Tie-tan sticks and Joe-fa helmets.

I had something similar. It started with light muscle spasms just below the deltoid. Then my arm would go numb and tingle. That progressed into fingers numb and pain referred down my arm. Then it went into full pinched nerve, shoulder pain, referred pain, and a month of agony. Went to doctor. X rays showed some wear on a disk. Scared the shit out of me. Went to physio. They gave me stretches and exercises. In a week the pain went from like a 7 to a 2. It was muscle tightness around my shoulders, specifically some muscles in around my peck/armpit area clamping down on a nerve. Took me a few months of stretching all the muscles in my neck and around my shoulders to get things to where there was no pain. It was an hour of stretching every day during that time. The problem tries to raise its head from time to time, but I recognize the feeling and nip it in the bud with regular stretching.

On my skates. 😄

If it works for you it works for you. In reality, it doesn't matter how long or short the stick is. If you want the blade to sit completely flat, simply close the blade face. Rarely, if ever, do you skate with the blade perfectly vertical. Generally, if you have the blade vertical, you're just making things harder on yourself in terms catching passes and stickhandling, etc. In general, you just have to worry about if you're comfortable adjusting your hand placement, so that it allows the stick to sit in position that allows you to do what you need. I'm 5'5 I use lie 5 and lie 6 sitcks. Depending on how I feel, I'll tweak the heights, regardless of lie, so they're somewhere between my collarbone and just below my chin, which is between 50" and 52". When I'm using a shorter stick, my body positioning adjusts in different ways. My hands get closer together, my knees bend a little more, and the general height where my hands sit is a bit lower, which I'm fine with. When the stick is a bit longer, the opposite adjustment happens. I remember a while back someone posted a pic of a Crosby pro stock stick. It was 54" in height. Crosby is 5'11- 6"0.

I find having a large knob on the top helps me get more leverage when flexing the stick, and more control for stickhandling. I used to have nothing there, but went to a knob. Found I like it way better.

No, what I'm saying is when you "finish" your stride, there's less "toe" to push off on, so you lose power. But it feels easier because your finish doesn't require a last bit of effort, so you're not generating as much speed/power/efficiency in each of your strides. As for quick starts, are you sure you're actually starting off quicker, or is it just that it feels that way because it's easier to have a higher stride frequency? Just because your feet are moving fast does not mean your body as a whole is travelling at a high velocity.

Some things to consider, the actual profile edge is, from my research, is only about 1-2 inches of that 60% of the runner you're talking about. Everything else is the gradual transition from that profile edge up to your toe. That transition will get more aggressive or less depending on the length of your runner AND how much "toe" or "heel" you have. The less "toe" or "heel" you have the more aggressive/steep that transition curve will be. Generally, this will make the skates less stable as you rock off that profile edge and it quickly transitions up to the toe. Think trying to keep an upside down pyramid balanced vs something shaped like a rocking chair. Now striding on a runner with less toe will fee easier, but IMHO, that's because you're not required to put as much power/effort into finishing your stride off, which will result in less power imparted into your stride and thus less speed. It's kind of like pedalling a bike on low gear vs a high gear. With a low gear, you have pedal more to get the same results, but each push is easier. Versus the power and effort required to do one push on a high gear. IMHO, if you chop off your toes, there's a real possibility you'll end up losing power in your stride and make you less stable. The degree in which you're affected is, in part, dependant on the length of your runner. If you have large runners, this effect will be reduced. But in general, the effect will probably feel like you're skating on an even smaller radius than the profile you're using. Coming from an old skate, if you haven't profiled your edges regularly, you were not only skating on a reduced toe with your old skates, you were probably skating on a way rounder profile. With each sharpening, skate runners tend to get gradually rounder. For me, I like lots of toe. I like feeling the bite and power when I finish my stride. When a sharpener fucked up and shaved mine off, it made the runners unusable, because I have extremely small feet/runners and the net effect was extremely reduced stability and bite. Everyone has their own unique needs based on their body type, but just remember there's no such thing as a free lunch. There are always give and takes with each tweak. For me, it's about finding the setup in which you give up the least to gain the most. And that's going to be different for everyone.

You're slightly bigger than me. I'm 5'5 175lbs. The best thing I ever did for my shot was drop flex. Unfortunately though, the best flex for me puts me into the junior stick range, 50 flex and below, and that comes with new challenges on it's own.

Another thing to think about for release is the flex some of the NHL players use relative to their weight/strength. Matthews is 223lbs and uses an 80 flex. I bet that helps him get an easier and quicker release while maintaining more stability in the blade. I don’t know about anyone else but I see beerleaguers who are not as big or strong use 80+ flexes

I don’t know if there’s a difference in release speed, but I do notice a difference in feel when loading and releasing. I find it’s a lot easier to shoot snappers with a QRE or Ribcore than a Supreme or Tacks. As for Barzel and McDavid using Tacks, do we know if they’re using the low kick version of the Tacks stick or not? And didn’t Matthews switch to an Alpha for last playoffs because he was having issues scoring? Edit: I also find if I drop flex with something like a Tacks or Supreme, they take a step towards feeling more like shooting with a low kick stick.

Over the years, I've gone from a stick that was an inch below my chin to one that's at my eyebrows to one that's about my nose to one that's at my chin to collar bone right back to where I started just an inch below my chin. I went to a longer stick because I wanted to shoot better and the whip I got off the longer stick was great, and the extra reach wasn't too bad either, but even though I stuck with it for years, I could not get used to the length. There were always instances where I'd loose the puck because I couldn't stickhandle in close, and it was very frustrating. In hindsight, it kind of screwed up my stickhandling in tight quarters. Now, I'm not saying I was Datsyuk, far from it, but before I started using the longer stick, at my level, which isn't high, I could tuck pucks by players and step around on a regular basis. And when I went back to the short stick, I was still struggling with pucks in close. It's been years since I went back to a short stick, and I think I'm only now beginning to feel a little more like my old self. In terms of shot and being able to change the angle while shooting. I found that dropping flex mitigates that loss of leverage. Personally, I wish I'd done that in the first place instead of going for the longer stick. The one positive I can think of is, after all the drastic changes, I can now tweak the length of my stick to be anywhere between my collarbone and chin and still be relatively comfortable with it. Depending on how things are going, I'll either take an inch or two off or add one or two. This seems to be a thing I do now. I either do this by changing butt ends or by taping the knob lower on the stick and leaving a small tale so to speak.

To me, the blades are similar in terms of openness. The difference lies in where the pocket is. With the p92, the pocket is in the middle. With the p28 the pocket is more towards the toe, about 1/3 of the way down from the toe compared to 1/2 with the p92. The p28 is for the toe shooter, and tends to be more unforgiving. If you don't shoot the puck off the toe, the puck tends to not get off the ice because there's more flat area towards the middle to heel. But if you have the puck too much towards the toe, you can scoop/hook it into the rafters. If you get it in the sweet spot, the p28 gives the puck a little more zip.

I totally agree about the knee bend. You get that down and everything gets a little easier. Better knee bend gets you better balance. And better balance makes you more stable for things like crossovers. The more stable you are the more power you can generate in your shot. And it goes on.

There aren't any guarantees that it will feel exactly the same, but theoretically, yes. How much you need to drop depends on how much you cut off the stick. When you shorten the stick you lose leverage to flex it. So if you drop down in flex, it will make it easier to flex the stick with the given leverage you have with the current length. If you want to get down to the math of it. I did some research a while back and made a post about it.

Pavel Barber review.

At the end of the day the choice is yours, but when ever I hear someone talk about skates, and they say they have their heart set on skate X, it always rings alarm bells in my head. Form my experience, it tends to not end well. Because it means someone is looking for all the reasons to buy skate X and are looking for all the reasons to not buy skate Y and are not giving the pros and cons enough of an equal measure. I'm not saying this is the case with you, because I honestly do not know, but I'm just saying be careful of getting blinded by the glitter of the new and shiny. With that said, you can adjust the way your laces are done up to help with the stiffness of a boot, and IMHO, that is a smaller adjustment to make than trying to make a skate that's too big work. My right foot is a quarter size larger than my left, and it's quite annoying. I couldn't imagine the challenges of trying to deal with an even bigger difference in foot size.

I'm not familiar with what the current CCM skates are like, but in the past, CCM boots were pitched forward more than Bauers. As others have mentioned, this can be a fit issue rather than the a skate build issue. With my laces loose, my skate still fits snuggly around my foot. I would have to give it a good hard kick to even get the skate to come off. If you have to crank the laces to get your foot to stabilize, that's a red flag you are either not in the right type of skate or in the wrong size of skate.

A while back, I was scouring the net looking what the equivalencies were between CAG and Prosharp. There's no one-to-one correspondence, but from the links below, the closest approximation is a 10' radius with a forward pitch. From the sparse info I could find. Pitching with the prosharp system moves the glide edge 5mm either forward or backward. http://www.ssmofnorthamerica.com/faqsbackground-on-profiling/

As skates age the foams inside compress and the skate will feel more roomy. If you feel like you’re on your heels too much, there Are two things IMHO you can try. First you can try Superfeet insoles. They take up more space than your Speedplates and they lift your heel, pitching you forward. The drawback I found was they deaden the feel for your edges. The second thing you could try is to reprofile your runners with a forward pitch. This will make it easier to get off your heels, but it’s not going to help you with the roominess in your skate.

It's not about like or dislike. It's more about pros and cons. Superfeet tend to get promoted as this universally great thing, but there is no free lunch. The are pros and cons that have to be weighed against each other for each individual. Superfeet get sold to people like myself who really don't need them, so without needing the pros, I'm left with only receiving the cons. Superfeet are great for those who's feet need them, but for those that don't, for the most part, they're better of not using them at all. It's like wearing a knee brace when there's nothing wrong with your knee.

The front is a 13’ radius and the back is 26’ 😛

I got new skates about 3 years ago. Here's the story of my trials and tribulations with insoles and profiling. Maybe it'll help you out. When I got my new skates, I got talked into buying superfeet carbon. They worked well enough and the soles of my feet were comfortable, so I kept them. As I got used to my new skates, I noticed, I was on the tips of my toes too much and my general stability was off. These are issues I've had in the past because I'm a 175lb dude with small feet, and figured, because I moved down half a size from a 5 to 4.5 skate, and thus was using an even smaller runner, I'd just need to do some work to get things re-calibrated. So, I worked and worked and worked on get it all sorted out by working my skating more. Well, after about 6 months with little to no progress, I decided to look at other options. I did my research and decided to get a flatter profile. Went to a 12' profile with a +1 pitch. Instant positive results. As time went on, I moved to a 13' profile and then to a neutral pitch. Things got progressively better with each change, but there were times where I'd get on my toes still. So I did some more research and re-familiarized myself on what pitching actually does. Pitching your skate with a forward lean involves moving the balance point of the skate along with the profile edge back towards the heel. This makes it easier to get onto your toes. Good for some, not good for me, so I went and got a negative pitch to my skate, which moved the balance point and profile edge forward towards my toes more, which put me on my heels more. Some things you read will say this is not recommended, but for me, it was another positive step. Unfortunately, moving the profile edge forward lessened the stability in my heels, which wasn't terrible, but I wanted to get things perfect. On that same day that I took the negative pitched profile runners out for their first test, I was taking my insoles out after and realized the superfeet carbon had a raised heel, which would put me up on my toes more. The next time I was on the ice for stick and puck, I went to the stock insoles, which I'd never used in these skates and noticed an immediate change for the better. Not only did the superfeet pitch me forward, which wasn't right for me, it also deadened the feel for my edges. Using superfeet for me was like putting mittens on and trying to type. The stock insoles weren't as comfortable, but they didn't hurt my feet either, so I stuck with them. During that stick and puck session, I swapped between a 13' neutral pitched steel and my 13' negative pitched steel to get a feel for what i liked. I thought I'd be going back to a neutral pitch, but as it turns out, I still liked the negative pitch more. But there was still the issue with stability in the heel area. So I went to the shop and asked if they could maybe give me a 14' or 15' profile. Well, they couldn't because they didn't have the profiling template. Nobody asks for something so out of the box. As fortune would have it I'd seen a video on Elias Petterson talking about tweaking his profile at that time. He was using a Detroit II profile, which is a 13'/26' dual profile that some goalies use. So, with nothing left to try and nothing to lose, I gave it a go, a Detroit II profile with a -1 pitch, and after one stick and puck session and one game with it, I can definitely say it was another right step for me. Probably some room to tweak some more, but definitely not going back. In addition, going to the flatter profiles made it so I felt comfortable enough to practice with completely loose laces during stick and puck and skate with looser laces during games, preventing me from getting lacebite, which is another long story in itself, so Ill leave that be. Maybe there's something useful in here for you in this very loooong post. Maybe not.