flip12

There’s ample room between those two extremes. As you’ve correctly pointed out, it’s very individual where the skate ends up on that spectrum. You can and you actually have to. Otherwise it would be impossible to get a sense of how thermoformability and boot body assembly affect feel and performance for instance. At the end of the day they’re all hockey skates. They’re all comparable to one another. Some comparisons result in a greater degree on contrast, but that’s all an effect of comparison.

Strangest gloves by each recent company… Bauer: one90, appreciate the attempt to push the envelope but it tried too hard to look different as well. CCM/Reebok: 30K, maybe the ugliest glove of all-time. Easton: Mako, ideas were decent, just horrendous appearanch. Mission: Fuel 90. Warrior: pretty much anything since the QRL. True: Anything Z-Palm

Nike Quest 1s featured similar nylon loops instead of eyelets over the forefoot. They cleverly covered the loops with pleather facing to prevent them from get sliced by skate blades.

They’re there, but not as augmented as other brands because the shell is meant to mold more.

I have the traditionally 4-fingered (+thumb) Mission Warp 2s from that era in my basement. The break pattern on the backhand and fingers was way ahead of its time, but a lot of small details were poorly executed or mistaken in their premises. Biggest issue is the thumb-index junction is too shallow, forcing the index finger into an awkward position. Otherwise, the feel is almost as natural as AK27 gloves…maybe no wonder because Kovalev experimented with Mission gloves of that vintage.

I remember those. Elbow pads like it too. That was my first thought. With the return of the hinged skate maybe they’ll do a protective rerun as well.

It’s insanely comfy. I just got one after way too long with a Bauer HH5000 that was just a terrible fit anyway. I tried on newer helmets before settling on the 4500 and they all felt all plastic-like inside, without the soft grip of the 4500, sliding around and whatnot. 4500’s a classic that just works. Like the tapered MacBook Air or iPhone < 4 body.

Just from looking at the differences, McDavid pro is a modified Iginla Jr., so you'd be adjusting to two sets of alterations: down in blade length, heel height, and lie to the Iginla Jr, as well as McDavid's added curve and loft. It's related to Iginla, but it's a wild child compared to the rather mild Iginla Sr.

They also list the weight of each product.

Shift and Shift Max are symmetrical, unlike the other holders on the market.

A stiff tongue feels as wrong for my skating as using an extremely stiff stick does for my shooting. It literally holds me back, keeping me from getting my ankle flexed enough, affecting pivoting and starting strokes the most. I tend to use the softest tongue I have, with really thin felt and amazing flex.

You requested an oversized holder even though you were going to switch the holder out anyway?

I get where you’re coming from, but in a financial sense, influencers already generate a lot of value and it looks to some in the industry that they’re the next frontier of value creation: @Jbear maybe the Hockey Supremacy sponsorship is just nepotism. That would be my first guess.

Bauer tried to market the new 3 fits both ways: as an improved mapping of the fit options to their foot-scan dataset and as a continuation of the fits you used to know in case you loved them. Some people have had a hard time adjusting. One guess about perceived volume differences between skates at different price points is foam thickness. Maybe the top end boots have thicker foam, making the boots feel less voluminous than their cheaper siblings.

Keep us posted with a link if you spot some. I'm psyched to see some tech-mesh HyperLites.

I've been on the lookout for tech mesh HyperLites. Do you have any pictures/image links? If you look for game used HyperLites, it appears Bauer has a grey and black outsole variant with a similar if not the same construction as the neon retail version.

High end boots had TPU outsoles until Bauer started reinforcing theirs with composite inlays and then full composite outsoles in the mid-90's. If you look carefully, pros still used skate TPU outsoles instead of composite, like Bure did on his first Vapor 8s. I think I even spotted a pair of TPU one90s but I can't remember who had them. Marleau skated on TPU until he ran out of his downspec'd 9Ks.

In the words of Fiona Apple, "so's everything." Kidding aside, looking at his performance over the years, I wouldn't rock that boat either. If his mental picture of what he's in is that solid that even a reskinned skate occupies even an iota of awareness, I'd say ditch it. His team needs all he can give and more. I don't doubt he could fly in any skate. Prior to his NHL days he successfully rocked RibCors, RBZs, and Tacks. For whatever reason, JetSpeed is where he sticks. Maybe it was the Goldilocks combination for him, and fussing with it just compromises his flow. Best performance flow in the world? Let it be. It looks like he tried one-piece ASiVs in preseason practices, but once the regular season rolled around, it looks like he was in his old JetSpeeds dressed as ASiVs. If you look back at the pictures you can see the same boot pattern as he usually wears--that short, almost LEGOish blocky look of JetSpeed boots--as well as a visible separate outsole, foxing, and distinct JetSpeed toe cap. He's tried original JetSpeeds skinned to appear current in previous generations, but he's never stuck with anything else for more than a few weeks. Around All-Star Weekend last year he did wear a one-piece ASiVish pair, but he switched back shortly after the All-Star Game. Back to your original question, I haven't followed the particulars of Bauer and CCM skate evolution over the last ten years so closely, but both brands have tended back towards less stiff, especially in the facing, as they seemed to conclude they went too far with stiffness (maybe the boots were simply lasting too long?) My thought was maybe it was in attempt to head off Scott Van Horne boots. Each time Bauer and CCM softened up a bit to provide more forward flex, they stole back some players who had gone over to SVH/True boots. Hyperlites (very Makoish) have gotten a lot of former Bauer wearers back, including Berniers, Wright, and Bedard.

Skates don’t improve year after year like that. What you’re picturing sounds like linear improvement. That’s the message that marketing departments try to sell, but it’s not that clear what an improvement actually is when you think about it. Sure, there are changes from year to year, and the messaging from the company’s marketing campaigns will always and only ever be positive about these, but there’s not objective measure to quantify “improvement.” Some improvements are actually missteps, which is usually clearest after in-depth reviews following actual product use start coming in. Once in a while there can be big jumps in product quality, from the Bauer Supreme 8090 to the one90 for instance. But there were still plenty of players who longed for the 8090 after it was gone. Similarly, lots of players who loved Vapors up to the X60 didn’t like CURV Vapors like the APX. Bauer accomodated that for a while, but those days are numbered. So even in cases when it seems as clear as possible that a product “improved” you’ll never get everyone to agree to jump to the new model ship: improvement is very individual and imprecise.

Which Tacki-Macs are thin? The few I've tried have all been quite thick. I actually like the thickness because I have pretty big hands, but they tend to kill the balance of my lighter sticks. They work well with old standard shafts and blades for me though.

Does Bauer still offer tech-mesh as an option in custom Vapors? I haven't seen a recent Vapor model dressed like that in the last few years. I've been nostalgicurious about Vapors lately. My last pair of Bauers were the original generation Vapor 8s. I loved how they got soft around the top 3 eyelets. The only pro I know of still wearing the tech-mesh build (was it called Mosoca towards the end of the glorious '10s? (Before the CoronApocalypse...)) is Thrill Kessel. Are there any others out there?

It's hilarious with the skates. He's tried them dressed as FT2s, FT4s, ASiVs, where he's only worn them in a couple-few games at most, then right back to the trusty old OG JetSpeed graphics package. How many iterations of this will they go through? They might as well just give him the Modano treatment and let him keep the exact same boot and look until he retires.

Out of their various alterations of the top 60% of steel from the Vapor 8 on, was the original Vapor 8 steel the best? Every other iteration seems to run into major issues related to structural compromises at the top.

Is the parabolic shape only at the top of Fly steel or all the way through? I.e. does it have a parabolic shape at the bottom where it contacts the ice or only at the top where it engages the holder? I wonder how that steel shape (whether only at the top or all the way through the) will fare in practice. That seems like a potential weak point, just like with Fusion and CarbonLite runners. What’s the idea? Flex in the blade (will the bend more readily as well in case of a bad holder mount?), manipulating effective longitudinal radius, weight savings? How will these play in Edge holders? Durability issues would seem to be exasperated by space between the blade and the holder.

CCM doesn’t call theirs comfort edge but they still have their own equivalent of that feature right? They’re referred to as “oversized ankle pads” in IW’s review video (@ 2:04):