flip12

How much has the new steel been sharpened? A lot of people had difficulty getting the new Mako steel to hold its first edge, as it seemed to require more priming than other steels. It could just be that effect all over again, as I imagine that's been left untouched.

Mission ice hockey is essentially gone though, much to the sadness and disappointment to the many big fans of their skates--though they did manage to go the wrong direction after the hit of the S series.

My experience is similar--used to skate in an 11 Graf, now I'm down to 10 because I know how skates should fit better, how much the boot will stretch and also my Haglund's deformities are half the thickness they used to be. But I love the stability and quickness I had on that 296 Cobra. I played roller hockey before ice so maybe that's why more steel feels good to me all around, but it does nonetheless. I just have a hard time thinking of geometry as a marketing gimmick, especially when it involves more mass to be carried by the user. Granted, this obsession with light skates has gotten even hotter since the one90, but there were other things one could then call gimmicky about the skate just because Bauer's users didn't support it, the shorter cut boot on the one90 for instance. I would also resist calling that gimmicky, again for geometric reasons and on the basis of my experience.

How do runner lengths compare from holder to holder? I thought I read on here that Cobra holders have longer steel for their base length than Tuuk, etc.

You're right, but at the same time it can allow the strength that is in your legs more room to operate. Personally, that's what I feel like on upsized steel, there's more room so I feel more balanced and I'm much quicker, both in long, full strides as well as in turning, where I can pick a portion of the blade to balance on and convert into a smaller effective radius than I can on shorter, normal length steel.

If you know where to get good profiling done. If you don't, how many multiples of that $15-20 are required to find it?

About the third shot I took with it (where I focused on getting the puck off from the toe and even looked at it to make sure it was there) it was like it was fired out of a gun. But I took me a couple-three weeks to really get a feel for the spot, but that was also only skating once a week and mostly scrimmaging, so not much stick and puck time, etc. Also, I hadn't played in 5 years, so a lot of it was just figuring out the balance of the stick, the length of the shaft for that blade, etc. When you say your accuracy is bad, is it consistently off, or is it completely unpredictable?

It does, I also thought of the Montreal M60. But both of those are more white, less of that nice fade effect Easton has incorporated into the their shaft. I like the look a lot better than those other two.

I was like that when I started playing with a Leino (Kovalev) pro stock, which is a kinkier curve and more rockered on the heel, but very similar in concept. I was trying to shoot from the mid/heel of the blade, instead of the toe. Once I got used to feeling the launch and release from the toe I was able to get really zippy shots low or high. It took me some time to get used to though, so I know what you're going through.

Sweet. Best looking stick Easton's had in a long long time. What's the pattern?

Just the fact of the area of applied pressure being smaller makes its effect more damaging, from a simple physics explanation...essentially, yeah, it's like a battering ram.

Nice Jensen. What's the blade geometry like?

Is it possibly more damaging due to the raised portion concentrating the pressure into a smaller point? Almost acting like a nail, even through that pressure. Plus, I can see that plastic not absorbing as much of the impulse as the softer body of the boot next to it.

Very true. I forget that sometimes

But the same foot doesn't fit the same size skate going from brand to brand or line to line--to me, if it's going to count, those ifs have to be whacked. When you look at the Bauer skates without the extremely light elements like the Supreme tongue or the old vapor tongue, the higher-tech liners, fusion steel, etc., then they're not all that much lighter than the Mako or the RBZ. I'm not disagreeing with your point, Bauer does make the lightest skates, but it's also misleading in my mind because you're comparing apples to swiss cheese then (without addressing those ifs). If Easton made a XLite Mako, with 30% lighter steel, an integrated tendon guard (exploding even), etc., then the gap wouldn't be so big in that direction. Also, a size-8 RBZ doesn't compare with a size-8 Supreme or Vapor, if I'm following what I've read on here. So even just to weigh the sizes out of the box appropriately, it would be better to weigh all of the sizes and plot them per line so you could do a better (more toward a normalized) comparison.

I just took those weights from Hockey Monkey, where they didn't have the Mako II weight when I checked, but what surprises me about the whole weight interest is there is no effort to compare the skates as apples to apples: we should be looking at the boots minus the weight of the steel to nullify the influence of scalloped or alumi-fused steel, and we should also subtract the weights of the holders, since those can be swapped at will as well.

Bauer NXG 708 (fusion steel) Bauer MX3 720 (fusion steel) Bauer APX2 766 (fusion steel) Bauer one.9 784 Bauer 190 794 Bauer Nexus 1000 810 (fusion steel) Bauer X100 812 Easton Mako 816 Bauer X7.0 820 Bauer X90 824 CCM RBZ 830 Easton RS 844 (scalloped steel) CCM CL 858 (scalloped steel) Graf G75 862 RBK 20K 864 (scalloped steel) Easton EQ50 866 (scalloped steel) Graf G75 872 RBK Ribcor 896 I have to run off to dinner, otherwise I could add the original prices to, but the Makos fare decently well, especially considering they have removable tendon guards. Integrating into the boot should save some weight against that redundancy, I would guess. Also, if I'm not confused about it, skates that fit large, like the RBZ where an 8 (Hockey Monkey's measuring size) would fit a bigger foot, would be skewed negatively by that method. Similarly, Graf, which fit small, would be skewed positively.

It's just that, the Mako's are not really that "heavy" are they? They're not the lightest out there, but they're close. They'd also feel a lot lighter if Easton had a similar product to Bauer's fusion steel, right? Which skate do you prefer due to its lightness (if we just focus on that characteristic)? If you want a stiffer and lighter Mako, maybe VH would do the trick, but I'm just guessing, I don't have anything to go off of there.

One thing I love about MSH is how it's helped me cut through this kind of question. Once I found a stick that worked for me, I still had little idea why it worked, until finding this forum which helped clarify how the different pieces contributed to the greater whole, and of course, by extension, allowed for each of those components to be analyzed and modified, optimized individually. MSH is where I go to find a scientific approach to feeling good on the ice, and if icewalker_bg feels better out there, it may be due to some other reason, which, once isolated, can be leveraged for even better feeling later. As he put it, you make a few small adjustments here and there and pretty soon, you're significantly better off. If your equipment is that much better suited to your unique proportions, you'll excel beyond your previous best. That's my paean to MSH.

Are you really quicker? Blind taste test: have you timed your skating through set courses and compared? What skates are you comparing to your Makos that you feel quicker in? It could be something other than the weight. It also could be the weight, but have you ruled out other things?

Nah, not a glitch, you can see the date, April 2 2014--it was to photomatch with the MIA gloves that Penguin Fan 96 picked up, seen just above the photo of Demitra with the ONE60. And yeah, Demitra used wood for a long time, so Bauer did the best they could I guess, dressing his sticks as something people might recognize when they were shopping.

Huh, interesting. The LS2's I skated on only had a decent amount of steel on one foot, so I never really got a good feel for the holder.

Good to know. I've used LS2 and it's been fine. How do you mean the towers would compress, you could feel them loading like springs or something?

Just because they're sticking out, but I can see in my head how a VH boot would be trimmer around its base, so that may be why they look so huge; also, as you mentioned, no negative space in these. I mean how high the boot is lifted by the holder itself--compared to older Tuuk Custom+, EPro, etc. I thought Edge and SpeedBlade were both higher holders than previous, ie, LS2. It just looks like the boot is off the ground higher, almost to the point of a lot of roller chassis+wheels.

Sweet. Didn't even notice the tongues until you called them out. They look quite nice. Huge holders, but I would do the exact same. This is the first time it's occurring to me with these taller holders and steel, but how high are boots being lifted, front and back, compared to before and compared to roller setups? Have you gotten to try them out yet? And are those waxed laces, Graf? Ok, enough with the 20-questions, I'm removing myself before my envy gets too much more embarrassing