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Meta

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Posts posted by Meta

  2. Posted · Report reply

    42 minutes ago, caveman27 said:

    Well, the pricing has been like this for decades. You have actual professionals who need highly protective gear and you have beginners who don't need as much protection and everything in between. Manufacturers build gear for various levels of players and price them accordingly. Your adult rec league player could wear high end shin pads or could wear beginner shin pads. Everyone has the free choice to buy the low end gear, the high end gear or something in between. Even playing ice hockey is an option.

    As someone who has played goalie and as a player, it's nice to have options. I really don't care if gear claims to make me a better player. If it doesn't fit well, I don't care if it's made with carbon fiber and weighs one ounce, I'll get the gear the fits right and weighs a pound. STX is going in an interesting direction with direct-to-customer sales approach. If you play forward, they are worth checking out if you want something that isn't $200+.

    As for quality of gear, when it comes to goalie gear, it seems like pads and gloves are made with a "it's going to be trash in a couple years" mentality. Back when gear was made with real leather, it could be used for quite a long time and patched if necessary. Artificial leather seems to wear down much faster than leather at high-abrasion areas. I guess you can patch it with a pad wrap material. Now, the internals of leg pads are made with nice lightweight foams, which break down. If the foams in the pads are gone, they are gone. Of course, foam leg pads are much lighter than animal hair-packed leg pads, I wouldn't suggest going back. 

    If you really want to play a cheaper sport, go ahead. You will see marketing of some sort where pro-level equipment is highly expensive and mid to beginner level equipment is cheaper.

    I can't stress enough how completely you missed the point of my post.

  4. Posted · Report reply

    I just got a pair of vintage Cooper SG 600s and while they don't stink, they are pretty dirty.  I'd rather not run the risk of damaging these at all with improperly washing them, and in all my years of playing, have never actually put equipment in the washing machine.  I'd appreciate any and all feedback on getting these babies back in beautiful condition.

  5. Posted · Report reply

    3 hours ago, boo10 said:

    I don't think hockey players respond differently than any other consumer base.  To use your PC building example, I know plenty of folks that fall for "this new Nvidia card can run Duke Nukem at 4 gazillion FPS".  So they spend $2k on a video card to play DOTA or something similar.

    The real irony is a lot of these types of people don't even have a monitor that can display framerates that high, so their money is totally wasted.  

    In any case, these people are acting like teenagers, or are in fact that young, and in some sense I can understand that.  When you're young you want the latest and greatest and you have no real filter for bullshit marketing quite yet.  Grown men, often 30+ years old, acting like overpriced, bad quality gear will get them noticed by the non-existent scouts in the stands at their rec league games so they can be the fourth liner/"enforcer" of their dreams though?  That a different level of sad.

    29 minutes ago, Westside said:

    No, it’s not unique to hockey players. Same in the photography world with cameras and lenses (this camera can shoot at ISO 1,000,000,000,000!!), football is similar with helmets and shoulder pads, running is the same with more cushioning or less cushioning being the best thing to reduce pain and increase your PRs, etc, etc. 

     

    One thing I will agree with is quality of gear even over the last 5 or so years. I feel like the Bauer APX and 1X lines were great, but from the 1X lite to today’s 3x, the quality and materials of protective pads and gloves has gone down dramatically. Same goes for Warrior with the QR1/QRL to whatever the hell number the QR gloves are at now.  Even the latest Alpha LX elbows are a downgrade from the DX they’re replacing. Sadly people do fall for the hype because it’s newer, so it must be better. 

    I see your point, and I agree, it isn't unique to hockey players, it just seems worse to me somehow.

  6. Posted · Report reply

    True to an extent.  While what you said is common, the reaction to it seems to be almost unique to hockey players.

    Let me use an example from another hobby of mine.  I build computers.  Custom high end gaming stuff.  That's an industry where marketing is equally ridiculous as it is in hockey, but the difference is the reaction of the intended base.  Most guys who build computers don't buy any of the hype.  It's a CPU.  It's a power supply.  It's whatever, it has objective qualities to it.  Plus, it's not like these companies slap a different colored heat sink on the same stick of RAM every year and say "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THE ReVoLuTiOnArY PERFORMANCE YOU WILL GET OUT OF OUR EXTREME PRO 2 FOR PRO RAM!"

    Not with hockey gear.  CCM tells you their new stick is .0003 grams lighter and calls it "EXTREME PRO 2 FOR PRO" and people line up to drop $300+ on it "because."

  7. Posted · Report reply

    I've basically come to the conclusion that hockey equipment is among the most predatory marketing schemes in sports equipment.  Maybe because there is so much of it, but nothing else comes close unless we're talking about really expensive sports like golf.  Most gear is just cosmetically different stuff that has gone fundamentally unchanged for 15-20 years, but is always marketed as "revolutionary."  

    The problem I see is that most guys just eat this up.  Adult rec league players legitimately believe that $200 shin pads or $160 elbow pads actually make them a better player.  Because CCM and Bauer told them so.  Which, to clarify, if you do in fact believe that, you have brain problems.  

    Not to mention the quality of the gear has gone down if anything.  Fancy foams with trademarked names doesn't really mean much when your expensive gear starts falling apart in a few years.  

    Sorry if this feels like an unfocused post, but this just really bothers me.  I wouldn't be on this site if I also wasn't particular about my gear, but there generally does seem like there is something uniquely wrong with hockey players in this regard.

    Anyone have any thoughts?

  8. Posted · Edited by Meta
    update     · Report reply

    Helmet: Bauer 4500 - black (looking to change this though)

    Cage: Hockey Ninja Ronin Mk5

    Shoulder Pads: inline player, none

    Elbow pads: Sher-wood Shertek 906

    Gloves: Labeda Pama 7.1 Pro - Edmonton / Eagle Aero Custom Pro in mostly white with black and pink

    Pants: Tour Code 3.One

    Shin pads: Cooper SG 600

    Skates: Bauer Vapor 3X boot with a Tuuk 7000 series aluminum chassis off a Bauer H-9 from the mid/late 90s, Labeda Millennium wheels in purple

    Stick: Sherwood Momentum 77 2-piece 85 flex with Bouchard pattern blade / one of if not the first Eastern Synergy sticks, Modano pattern, 75 flex / two Easton Silver Tip two piece aluminum sticks, one Gretzky and the other the red one, forgot the name, which I no longer use as they are too sentimentally valuable to me to risk after I dug them out of storage from like 15+ years ago along with my other sticks if you couldn't tell.

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