the_game

Also with how well the baking process can be tweaked & customized with True, find a retailer who knows their stuff and can get you dialed in.

Boring but that’s the going rate since the Bauer acquisition.

Break open your piggy bank and also find out whatever favors you can do for @JunkyardAthletic, I think he might have a few, also the line forms to the left so get behind me 😁.

I'm just curious where you bought those from, because I'm with @Hills looks like someone baked them and pushed down on that spot. Maybe your skates were baked previously to them being sent to you?

I worked at a shop when the V-form rep came by to get us to try them, we all looked at each other said why don't you just show us... V-form rep got a full head of steam going in the parking lot and tried to prove you could do a hockey stop on them, he went down hard on the concrete! Did it a second time and it just turned into him looking like he was sliding into second base and ripping his pants. We had a good laugh that day.

Those were hot garbage!!!

+1 for going down a half size in True vs Bauer or CCM.

I used to head up to a Tournament at that Halton rink ages ago when I was in college. I think it was in May or early June perfect time of the year, what a great barn to play roller in, awesome competition and a great little town to have some fun nights out with the boys.

Toots hibbert

For me the way my trues wrap/form around my foot starting from the third eyelet down from the top, I need to have the top two eyelets undone in order to get my foot in. Laces are undone and the tongue is pulled out so I can slide my foot in using 'sideways/twist & turn' method to getting my skates on. Thats just me I guess.

There is a lower barrier to entry with Inline/Roller Hockey if you ask me. Grab a pair of inline skates, stick and puck/ball and boom your playing on any flat surface. Grab a group of friends or find a spot where theres a pick up game and you're playing. I'm with Miller, Long Island guy who got his start playing roller in the 90's where on every street you could find kids playing or at the local tennis court there'd be 'organized' games a few times a week and then there were leagues popping up all over. For parents its a way to test the waters to see if your kid is really serious about playing and then you can make the jump to ice if they're into it. For me roller was a springboard to ice hockey, fell in love with the game and all I wanted to do was play. Another way of looking at 'why play roller' is what it will bring to your ice game. Watch any hockey documentary or interview and every Canadian kid at some point talks about pond hockey and I would say for much of the US where it doesn't get cold enough roller serves as their pond hockey. No coaches telling you to get pucks deep or cover your point man, just you and your buds messing around, trying different moves, making your own game. I think theres a lot to say about that atmosphere where kids have no pressure on them and they can go out and just play. And then if you want to get into 'organized' roller or a league or tournaments theres a lot to be said about how the 4 on 4 game develops your ice game, whether that be individual patience with the puck or stickhandling in general. Then theres the positional aspect with no offsides where the game changes to a puck control and I think a ton can be learned there to develop your hockey IQ. If you watch a high level roller game you will see how controlled the guys play, how they won't risk taking a shot if there isn't a good play or how if they don't see the right set up they'll take the puck back and re-group. You'll see how no one really plays a position, you can have a framework but the game can quickly develop to man on man where you end up all around the rink. I like to compare inline hockey to watching the old Russian teams before they were allowed to play in the NHL. Those teams would gain the blue line and if they didn't have anything would come out, regroup and move back up the ice as a unit. To me thats roller hockey and I would say 9 out of 10 youth hockey coaches would lose their minds if they ever saw their players do that. My entire high school ice hockey team played roller at some point and so did our coach, we managed to create a little bit of a dynasty winning a few NY State championships back in the day and I would say a lot of how we played was inspired by roller hockey style puck control. So yea, why play roller? Because its fun, you can pretty much play any where, and it will help your ice game. And now you can go to college and play roller too. And if you want you can go play some tournaments and have a fun little vacation while playing some damn good hockey as well.

For reference here is what I’m referring to, they eyelets seem to be set further back than they are on my customs. I get flaring that part out but isn’t the whole point of the trues the wrap they provide? With my customs I barely have to tighten them up, the wrap provides all the support I need and the eyelets aren’t an issue getting laced up either.

Yup, know exactly what you're talking about and thats how I got them laced up, although it was almost impossible to do so. My concern is once the skates are baked will the wrap/curve of that area just make it that much harder to lace up. The eyelets on my custom seem more 'front facing' I guess or closer to the edge of the area where the eyelets are.

I went and tried on the True TF9 this past weekend to see what size I would be as the custom pair I have now is second hand. Once I figured out which size would work I went and laced them up to walk around and just make sure there wasn't any heel slippage or weird spots. The issue I had is getting the top two eyelets laced up seemed damn near impossible as the eyelets are set so far back once your foot is in it blocks the eyelets. On my custom True's now with the way they wrap I have to leave the top two eyelets undone just to get my foot in and then lace up the last two eyelets. The store I was at wouldn't bake the skates unless you buy them and there was no way for me to see how accessible the eyelets would be after the bake or if I could get my foot in once baked and the skate entirely laced up. The store I was in didn't bring anything to the table with the fitting process, which isn't surprising, so I'm just going to wait until I can get to a proper store who can help me out. Just curious if anyone else noticed the eyelet set up and if they had similar experiences on the TF9 or TF7?

Tour needs to bring back the sensor chassis from labeda. New missions sound underwhelming which seems par for the course with the Bauer news of them closing the cali location.

Share the deets on the new Mission skate design.

I get the business end of this but at the same time screw Bauer. As someone who was a kid when Bilt-Rite/Mission started to seeing it evolve and eventually make its way into the NHL only to be bought up and basically shuttered by Bauer is just depressing. Mission was always a great brand pushing the evolution and functionality with their equipment and they always had an edgy marketing approach & a design aesthetic that defined inline/roller hockey.

No one would listen to us @DarkStar50 we know too much, have too much experience, and make too much sense!

Oh but they're setting out to 'disrupt' the industry...marketing buzzword bingo has commenced! 'CODE' series, doesn't Tour Hockey have a 'CODE' Line of equipment?

With skates being mostly a blank carbon fiber design, if you could create a sticker or decal to customize a skate that would create a pretty interesting market. I've seen some stuff on instagram but I'm not sure if its available to the masses yet. Or if you had the artistic ability and maybe airbrushing equipment of some sort you could create some interesting customizations as well.

I'm onboard with all the ideas here. I still think there's a market for limited production, nostalgic based design/aesthetics with modern materials. Especially on sticks and skates if the only thing companies have to do is change the print/logo they put on stuff, which seems pretty do-able nowadays. I think the companies could print a CCM Tacks Heel Wedge or the white/black contrast on the heel like Mega Air 10-90's skates or make a shiny silver gretzky-esqe one piece stick. I'd love to see gloves in retro color-ways or at least more than the drab one solid color, but I kinda get how that process could be difficult in the manufacturing process. Just take a page out of Nike's handbook and 're-issue' or 're-make' stuff on a limited run, make a cool social media campaign behind it to get the kids on board, and boom profit. At least thats how it works in my mind...

The Bauer stick with the hole in the blade totally stole that tech from Mylec! I never thought of Innovative as mainstream way back in the 90's when they first came on the scene mostly because they were just shafts and only had 1 or 2 models versus every other manufacturer back then would have an entire line of equipment and multiple stick models. I did forget the Branches 'composite' twigs, good call!

give me a pair of 4 rolls with the Cooper logo/font

'Fontaine' Graphite sticks, remember Luc Robitaille using them. iTech 1-piece sticks that Larinov used were made by 'Busch'. Obviously 'Innovative' was huge in the 90's, Kovalev using them and then it basically becoming the Warrior we know today. And Pavel Bure used an off brand Composite called 'CAMAXX' but I'm not sure if I remember seeing it as that, it was a black shaft that had goldish lettering and even had a weird tactile grip if I remember, there are a lot of pics of Bure using it all blacked out. They were widely sold in the NY Area. Also there was Power-Flite, although I am not sure I remember them making anything but Aluminum shafts but thats from around the same timeframe as these others I listed.

I stand corrected!