flip12

That makes more sense regarding Pastrnak. I didn’t watch much of the Bruins until the Finals. That’s not true.

I love the mid-90s Canucks unis. Easily that franchise’s best IMO.

More ergonomic but skinnier? By 'more ergonomic' I'm picturing a Birkenstock forefoot shape. Did you mean something like that? However, by making the toecap narrower, wouldn't that be making the boot less ergonomic? I imagine that toecap width is something that gets determined by the foot the skates are built for. They should be the Goldilocks 'just right' width if scanning, building, and molding go as they should.

In what way would you like to see it changed?

IMHO, this should probably be its own thread. It lives a parallel existence to the proper Bruins/Blues thread...having said that: Thanks for the links. It's interesting to look at other dives for notes. I can see where these have more hallmarks to them that underline the embellishment. I do have a hard time accepting the argument that, if he were diving he wouldn't have hit his head. I don't think it actually makes sense, because it assumes that a player knows the full outcome of going down prior to initiating the dive and that's not a given. There are some cases where they do plan their landing (perhaps better), as your links show. But there are also incidents where they don't, like this one with Sam Reinhart ... At first it might seem ridiculous that someone might get hurt embellishing on a play, but that can happen. It's not always possible to know the outcome of a fall. You can have an idea you should go down to sell the penalty, but that doesn't mean you'll do it well, both in the sense of making it believable and making sure you don't do something stupid that gets you hurt. Something stupid like hurtling face first into the boards and forgetting about the dasher that juts out below the glass, or attempting to do a bicycle kick on ice and landing a bit too high on your back so you hit your head on the ice. I can't see how Acciari's right leg makes any sense if it's not a dive. It's not sliding forward, as though he loses his balance backward. It simply comes up, straight off the ice and at the same time he leans his back further into the fall. That's what makes his fall look like it has two phases. Once his right leg leaves the ice it looks patently false, to me. Though it even looks suspicious right from the start. MacKinnon on the other hand falls in one motion and spins out, which is the natural effect of losing balance on one leg while another one is still on the ice. All of the embellishment links in this thread seem to have those two phases where it's a jerky fall that has dead giveaways of bad acting. I can see where a fall on ice might have two phases if a player starts to fall but still has a chance to regain balance with the other foot, only to fall backward on the flat of the blade. Acciari's right skate doesn't shoot out at all like that, so even if he were going to fall his right leg would have only come off the ice at most a little bit (again see MacKinnon for example). Even if Acciari were going to fall anyway, he would have spun, as is natural when one's center of gravity is suddenly tilted off the axis of support, in this case, his right leg. For those who say, "No way, this wasn't diving." What the hell is happening with his right leg? Is it demonically possessed? On a general diving/embellishment note, has anyone seen a team awarded a power play where only the diver was assessed a penalty? Whenever I've seen diving called, it's only been offset by the other penalty. I'm wondering if NHL referees are discouraged from calling diving alone on a play.

The players definitely picked their spots. Marchand was pretty blatant in interfering with O'Reilly right of the power play face off, but McAvoy was deliberately hands off when Tarasenko blew by him on the way to his one touch assist on goal 3. When it came to guys on the puck or chasing a loose puck, they laid off. Getting to the puck carrier was another matter. I hate to say it, too, but I've got to agree with @chippa13. The fix was in. Only it wasn't the refs going for St. Louis, but rather Marchand and Pasta who seemed to have been unable to resist the odds and put down a lot on the Blues winning or something. Pastrnak looked like someone had ordered his Fisher Pros as extra high P28s or something.

But also some big leaguers use longer profiles just fine. I won't lie, I don't play anything better than beer league. But one example I can think of was Gaborik was on some monstrous combo like 13'/30' or something when I saw a pair of his used skates pop up on eBay.

I haven't experimented intentionally with my skates' profile until wanting to do it this upcoming fall. All I know is from trying out different stock radii from 9', 10', and 11' and 11' feels the best. The 11' is on pitched Cobras, so the pitch might be part of the positive experience on an 11' profile for me. I feel like every aspect of my skating is better on an 11'. My question is if that's the beginning of a sweet zone for me or if it's actually my sweet spot. There could be better for me out there. As to your question, how turns and starts are good on a longer radius, I guess it's what you're used to. I think for me personally it's because I played a lot of roller hockey before coming over to ice. As Justin Hoffman explained regarding the difference between roller and ice hockey skate setups, it explains why I like the forward pitch of Graf, and a longer radius seems to allow my most natural skating to come out. I can skate alright on a 9' or a 10', but I feel like I lose speed on every stride. Specifically with turning, I'm used to selectively balancing over a portion of my blade and shifting that loading position along the blade throughout the turn. If I'm on a shorter radius, say, less than 10', I start to lose that feel and instead start to tip forward and back, which really diminishes my shooting. It feels like golfing on the deck of a sailboat in choppy water. Starts aren't too bad. Roller skates are really heavy by comparison, especially the last pair I had, Mission Proto Vs. I can't toe start as easily on longer radii, but I feel like toe starts are overrated anyway. As long as you get good leaping strides to start out and your stride rate isn't significantly diminished by gliding a bit as you take your next push, that's actually a bit of a bonus. As with every element of equipment minutiae, to each their own; praised be the gods of personal preference, yet again.

How does that compare to the MLX tongue? They look pretty similar.

I have too many questions about how NHL refereeing works to answer that. In the case of trip and embellishment, does that result in 5-on-5 or 4-on-4? Is it worth it to make that happen so late in a 1-0 SCF game late in a tied series? If Acciari diving is horseshit, why did he look more like Pele than MacKinnon after Bozak made contact with him? My conjecture is, the refs are trained to try and spot embellishment. Sometimes it results in a call, other times it doesn't. I've never seen embellishment called and nothing else, so maybe the operating mode is, 'if you spot embellishment but there was no other penalty, let them play on.' In that case, Acciari being down in his zone is no different than if he were because he got hit with a shot and couldn't get up. I do agree that the refs didn't blow it, either the whistle or the call. I just can't believe Acciari legit Peleing from a half-speed Bozak bumping--not even kicking like Kadri did to MacKinnon--his knee.

You already did...you don't remember? Also, did you not read the post you just quoted? All the answers are in there.

I have neither the time or the interest to verify if there isn't a single analyst that said Acciari embellished. But I'll take your word for it. Thanks for doing that research. I don't care what analysts say or not. My opinions are my own, and I don't need them rubber stamped or adorned with shiny star stickers. There are lots of sayings. Lots of them contradict each other. They're not all right, obviously. Also, there's no way to know if Acciari dove or not, so there's no way to be right or wrong on this, definitively. The level of explanation isn't that involved, really. But if you think it's "too much," I guess I can see where the issue is. If you watch highlight reels of NHL slew foots and you still think Acciari didn't at least embellish, then I'd at least be surprised.

The Blues weren't pressing until the Bruins got out of position. Perron is the one that pushes the puck in from the blueline. Bouwmeester's never even in the zone during the sequence, which is why there wasn't any active 5-on-4 advantage. Acciari going down leaves it 4 Bruins in the zone against the Blues' 4. Yes, a player going down and staying on the ice in your d-zone leads to edge case logic applying, but in this situation, it looks like that just gets applied terribly. It only takes a couple of seconds for that 4-on-4 to become a 2-on-1, but even watching it in live speed, you can see as they unravel. As to your commentary on my comment about content, I got what you were trying to say, but it's still meaningless. There's no content there. You just saying, 'your detailed explanation of the situation that's different from mine' is "hilarious" doesn't really contain anything. If you watch video of NHL slew foots, there are many more cases of guys spinning out or simply tipping over and falling on their backsides, even in cases where bigger players are coming in on them with more speed and less notice. Just look at that bicycle kick and tell me it's not suspicious. That's some (FIFA) World Cup quality diving, but thankfully the ref didn't bite.

Huh? This isn't the first time you respond with absolutely no content. Well, Carlo, a defenseman, was pretty much standing a stick's length from the blue line when the puck got pushed back to Bozak and still had a chance to recover down low but instead got tangled up with O'Reilly. After Acciari went down, it ends up 4-on-4 in the zone. 3 out of the remaining 4 Bruins seem to lose their bearing, possibly because they were assuming a penalty would be called and forgot to continue to play. The 2-on-1 comes after several breakdowns: Carlo's fade and tangle, Kuraly's missed challenge on Perron where he brushes by Bozak, and Nordstrom's obliviousness to the hole created by the collapse of Carlo, Acciari and Kuraly being out of the play. It's not like Acciari went down and Bozak picked up the puck 2-on-1.

What it looks like when I watch it is Acciari saw Bozak coming to put pressure and planned to go down if given the chance. Bozak bumps him leg to leg and he goes for it. It's hard to see how hard they collided, but I'm highly convinced he embellished. That bicycle kick was impressive, but completely gratuitous. The timing of his fall is all out of sync with the contact with Bozak. I'm not sure what spotter protocol is like. I'm not sure how conversations between players and the rest of the staff go in the case of a dive, or in just about any case, for that matter, so I can't reply to the suggestion that this wasn't a dive because if it were he wouldn't have been pulled by the spotter. I can't analyze the contents of a locked black box. It just looked like Acciari was fishing for a power play and didn't get it. Maybe it was a legit penalty and he overdid his sell and that convinced the ref that it probably didn't actually warrant a tripping call, I don't know. But it looks fishy as hell. Even I had Bozak's "c'mon you can't seriously call that" reaction when I saw it the first time, without the assistance of replay and slow motion.

Acciari dove. It was a perfect no call.

Thanks. It was too small to read on my phone.

What’s the blade pattern?

Is there a noticeably different feel in comparison with the standard grey printed liner? I thought that was also Clarino.

I've only skied for a few minutes in my life (the loaner set I was using was so worn one ski wouldn't clamp tight enough to pull through 4" of powder and stay locked), but it reminded me of skating. I've never snowboarded, but the analogy is starting to fall apart in my head. With a snowboard, your feet are linked at a fixed distance from each other, right? I can't picture skating like that. Maybe I'm just not following... I much prefer a stock 11' on Graf to anything else I've tried--mostly 9' and 10', but I think I tried a pair of CCMs that were 7' because I felt like I had absolutely no glide, and no pivot length to launch into strides from. I think I'd be happy on an 11' again. I'm just wondering if I'm missing out not going longer. If I'm not mistaken, I think it's somewhat common for players in Sweden to skate on longer radii than 11', so the advice might just vary that much due to geography. I'll try to get some sense from the shop that can profile about what they'd recommend and why. I wish I had extra steel, so I could get an 11' just to have it and have an extra set or two to try out alternate profiles.

The place I’m looking at has those options available too, and they do seem intriguing with the longer radii in the back. For this round, I’m afraid I might need to minimize the steel loss, because I’m working with a single set of MLX holders and steel, so I don’t have the chance to try the ideal approach, rotating multiple sets with different profiles. If I can get a pair of Trues next year, I’ll definitely go with that try everything approach though. For now I’ve thought I’d keep it to the single radius options to keep it simple and avoid steel loss. With that in mind I thought I’d try the longest single radius and work down to 11’, since that should minimize the steel loss if I’m picturing it right. I just want to hear from others if trying something like a single 17’ is crazy before I go with it.

Hi all. I’m looking at getting my skate blades contoured before we get our ice back in August. Out of the common stock radii (9’, 10’, and 11’) I’m by far most comfortable on 11’. This makes sense to me because I played several years of roller hockey prior to switching to ice, and the longer radius feels more natural to my ingrained skating. My question is, what are people’s experiences with radii longer than 11’, because the place I can get my blades done offers 13’, 15’, and 17’, as well as some combo radii? From what I’ve read in the ProSharp Project reviews, no one has reviewed a radius longer than 11’ yet, and a search didn’t return any existing topics dedicated to this question yet.

Also / or better range of motion. He's been wearing them pretty much constantly since mid-March 2016 what I saw in a quick GettyImages search. 55 Flex introduced this as a product, but the company didn't last long. If you search you'll find a few topics on 55 Flex and how to make your own. There's a company or two always selling their version on eBay. That's the first image of him with them in, from March 14, 2016. PS... this segment should probably be moved to the Gear Sightings thread, as it has nothing to do with VH/True.

Who asked you for data? I asked you for an opinion based on a close reading of the test's writeup rather than a critique that basically amounts to "this data must be garbage because if it isn't then I can't believe the marketing that says this new and improved helmet design is really new and improved, because features!" That's not an argument that gets you very far. It should be clear that companies have their own interests first, which entails marketing everything as an improvement. Without data, how can we assess if there is any improvement or even a consistent level of performance? A pass/fail test doesn't help there. A lot of people in this thread have attacked the VT study's data without understanding what the data even is. People want to hate this effort but for reasons that aren't really accurate. That makes me wonder if there's retaliation because other interests are feeling threatened and we end up hearing propaganda that isn't an accurate depiction of what the STAR rating system is. It isn't without its flaws, but a lot of the supposed flaws are non-existent or were applicable to earlier iterations but have been improved on since the first STAR rating results; rotational impact being the biggie. I don't see @BenBreeg arguing that the STAR system is law, but rather that it's a step towards a better idea of the complicated assessment of risk when it comes to head injuries. That's the problem with research--it's not really as cut and clean as it's often presented in the pop press, and that pop aspect is meant to feed consumers the food for thought that they want. The 1-5 stars are a shrewd way to play it both ways, but I'll maintain that that has upsides and downsides. @stick9 you should go back and carefully reread what comments you're replying to because they are full of misapprehensions. @OldTrainerGuy, what's the downside of using a football headform? How is a football headform not suited for a hockey helmet? It would seem both would be abstract representations of average human heads and football helmets and hockey helmets are meant to actually protect the same actual heads in practice. Is there a response from HECC and CSA explaining their misgivings with STAR? I'm not sure if I missed it before, but what about the VT lab's analysis of rotational impact is seen as insufficient to test for rotational impact by the certification boards you're familiar with?

1. Sure, you can do that, go ahead. But that's completely different from what the VT STAR ratings are. They are peer-reviewed studies, which is all about test the degree of questionability of not only data, but everything involved in a study: background, procedure, results, theory, etc. 2. Peer-review acts as somewhat of a guard against junk science. Like concussions, there is no absolute guarantee of preventing junk science. The best we can do is develop standards and procedures that do the most to eliminate potential sources of error. In that sense, the VT lab has already been vetted in a certain arena (a quite powerful journal, as it happens), which does mean the data is good and valid to that degree. 3. I think I know what you're saying, but I have to substitute another word for likelihood to make it make sense. There is always a likelihood of sustaining a concussion. That is, there is always a non-zero probability that you will sustain a concussion going about your daily routine. Playing a contact sport increases that risk or likelihood. There is no way to prevent it. The facts of movement and having a brain entail the likelihood of sustaining a concussion. What I think makes the most sense is, 'VT _ that (helmets that achieve a 4 or 5 star rating according to) their rating system are not guaranteed to prevent concussions,' (indeed, the likelihood of there being cases of concussions in the better rated helmets is high if not absolutely a guarantee). 4. I can't answer that...if it was a question? At least not exhaustively. I think one angle of support for the VT study that I for one am happy to see I'm not alone in taking in this thread, is that I don't so much put faith in it as I see it as a positive development. I think it's great that there's an objective, transparent analysis of the degree of protection afforded by the most important piece of protective equipment in the sport. I'm surprised there aren't more people that welcome that transparency and look ahead to when further dialogue in the vein of the VT STAR system can help produce helmets that have scientifically analyzed and vetted design principles. This makes me wonder, are the helmet certification procedures and results available for similar analysis and commentary? If so, that's great, and I wish there would be more cross-comparisons between the VT lab's work and what the prior approaches have been. If not, then we need to have a conversation about what's more dangerous: people buying a helmet because they think they're protected by an oversimplified safety seal (my critique of the VT study, but I do understand marketing is a huge factor in research these days) that is the result of an objective analysis, or people buying the helmet they think looks the coolest and heck, it's certified so it must be good. I get not wanting to misguide buyers into helmets that don't fit (notice VT says "genetics" will be a significant factor in eventual concussion occurrence--head shape falls under that umbrella somewhat) based on them wanting to pick out the highest rated helmet regardless of anything else. But is it ok to have manufacturers keep pumping out ever more expensive helmets with an ever increasing list of features without the consumer getting some indication of whether or not those design improvements are actually working or not? @OldTrainerGuy what is a football head form? And how does VT's assessment of rotational impact forces fall short?