Pads dont want to recenter after b-fly

[willoe 0]

Hey Everyone...

Forgive me if this has been covered in a previous topic, I searched but couldn't find a answer.. I'm new back to the game, haven't played in 15 years, been back on the ice for 2 months now...Needless to say much has changed from the days when I was playing and I've been having a hell of a time getting strapping right on my legs.

For whatever reason I cant seem to get a good setup that gives my pads good rotation when dropping down to b-fly, but then recenter when I pop back up...Its frustrating the hell out of me.. Anyone else have this issue, or have any good suggestions on strapping?

If it helps Im wearing Revoke 7000's. Some of the guys I skate with think it could be a shallow boot channel?

Thanks for the help.

[Law Goalie 147]

It's a common problem, and while it has been dealt with before, it's usually buried pretty deep in the posts.

It does have something to do with the boot channel, but the Revokes 7000's actually have a relatively deep one, for a modern pad, and locking your foot into a deep boot channel would create far more problems, and far worse ones, than it would solve.

First off, a small technical point: modern pads don't actually rotate around the leg in transitioning to and from the butterfly and most other save-movements; rather, the leg, and chiefly the knee and foot, rotate *behind* the pad. The front of the pad should remain facing out towards the puck at all times; the knee-cap rotates from facing the back of the pad to facing the knee-wing/block, and then drives that down into the ice, while the skate rotates under the boot to disengage the blade from the ice, and end up with the toes pointing down towards the ice, as they should anatomically (unless your flexibility is on the Ryan Miller/Mikka Kiprusoff level).

There are two basic ways your problem can happen:

If the pads are worn too tightly, especially at the boot and knee, that can prevent the leg and foot from re-centering behind the pad. The reason is simple: driving (or even just dropping) to the ice generates more force than getting back up. If your pads are relatively tight, your leg may partially rotate behind them as you go down, then finish rotating only when the pad hits the ice: a fairly high-energy moment of collision that has no corresponding moment in recovering to your stance.

For reference, the straps on your pads should be worn only tight enough to hold the medial surfaces (knee-wing and calf-wing) in place, at roughly 90 degrees to the pad, allowing your knees and legs to move freely behind them; the boot straps should allow your feet total freedom of movement behind the pads to come out of the boot channel and rotate, acting only to keep them from separating too far; and you should have at least a couple of inches of slack in your toe-ties, and ideally enough to allow your toes to point down towards the ice in the butterfly. The easiest way to do this is to throw on skates, knee-pads (if you use them, and you should!) and pants, then strap the pads on using only the elastic velcro knee- and calf-locks, and drop into the butterfly. From there, do the knee, boot, and calf straps, then stretch the toe-ties from the pad to the toe of your skate where it naturally sits, and make the ties with a pen. Take the pads off, measure that distance from the pad to the pen-mark, then begin knotting your toe-ties to create that many inches of knots behind the pad (naturally, the pen-mark will end up somewhere in the middle of those knots).

Once you've eliminated that possibility, the major cause, a mechanical one, can be addressed.

As I mentioned before, dropping to the ice generates more force than getting back up-- and, more properly, driving your knees to the ice behind the pads generates even more. You can, however, apply a pretty good amount of force to the pads in recovering to your stance, and this tends (in my experience) to both feel unnatural and to not come naturally to goalies who are used to old-school pads and techniques, like us. (I was probably among the last goalies rigorously trained in stand-up on the face of the earth, and my re-training to the butterfly game was a long and painful process involving several goalie coaches and a lot of beer.) For most goalies inclined that way, recoveries to the stance are not done forcefully or very precisely; it just isn't a part of the training or thinking.

What you want to do with a loosely-worn, stiffly-built modern pad, is to think about snapping the lateral side (outside) of your knee up and away from the ice sharply, creating the exact opposite movement from the knee-drive that rotates your knee behind the pad and drives the knee-wing down into the ice. This is partly why relatively few modern goalies use double-leg 'hop' recoveries from the butterfly: in order to generate enough force to keep the pads in place, facing outward, you need to be incredibly quick, strong, and precise. Recovering one leg at a time is much easier, and, frankly, it gives you better mobility options and composure by getting one of your skate blades (and ideally the one that can drive you to the next scoring threat) back on the ice. One-leg at a time is also the easiest way to practice the movement: just kneel on the floor with your knees together and heels separated, in a roughly butterfly position, and work on forcefully and precisely snapping your knees up from the surface and back down again; as you snap your knee up, bring your foot in under your shoulder. (If you want a really good workout, once you're in this split-knee position, one down on the floor and one coiled up under the shoulder, do a one-leg squat up and down again: that's exactly the movement you need to recover fully.)

Hope that helps!

[willoe 0]

Hey Law,

Thanks for the advice...Tonights skate I was talking to one of the goal coaches at the ice I skate on about this also. He tossed me a pair of V3's to play with tonight. I strapped them just as you talked about in your post. I also worked on snapping my legs up, and seemed to have little or no problem with the pads re-centering. I also felt more agile in my lateral pushes.

Now I cant say it was the V3's, ill have to try my Reeboks out next skate in the same way, but I will say the V3's felt a lot less cumbersome then the Reeboks. Reeboks are 33+1 and the V3's 33..

Thanks for the great advice, Ill update after next skate in the Reeboks.

[Law Goalie 147]

Glad to hear it helped-- and good on your coach for giving you a chance to try some other pads. Try as many as you can: there are as many kinds of goalie pads are there are kinds of pliers, and while all will protect your legs and pinch things respectively, they all do it in slightly different, valuable ways. (That said, I am not encouraging anyone to possess every pair of goalie pads available at once, though that might be a good idea with pliers. )

The V3's probably felt less cumbersome because they have a relatively 'closed' leg-channel; even more so than the Revokes with the calf-wrap. The V3's also have a relatively tapered boot, which requires less slack in the toe-ties to get your foot closer to the ice; hence the magically improved lateral mobility. Having said that, tapering the boot also has a number of drawbacks, and you can get the same result by offsetting the toe-ties toward the medial (inside) edge of the toe, or just adding more slack.

Play around and see what works best, and keep us posted!

[willoe 0]

Hey Law,

Thanks for the advice, and again after skating on the Revokes, and then again on the V3's. I just feel better in the V3's, the re-centering improved some on the Revoke's but I still had impaired lateral movement, and sluggish recovery. Which has left me checking ebay for perhaps a good deal on some Vaughn's .

That being said, anyone mind helping me with the some of the primary difference in the V3's and V4's out there?

Thanks.

[Law Goalie 147]

Hey, that's progress: some gear just works better for some people. I couldn't stand a Reebok glove until the P3, but I love the pads.

As for the Velocity pad evolutionary lineage...

The V3 began the transition away from 'Shred-Pak' shredded foams: there was still some shredded foam in the pad body, but most had been replaced with sheets of low-density foam (mostly LD45). The thigh was thinned out and squared up (V2's were tapered, apart from custom orders and the very end of the run), the leg-channel was slightly widened, and the NHL-spec knee- and calf-wings were added.

The V4 moved closer to the Carey Price standard, right before he switched to Reebok. Shredded foam was entirely removed from the pad. The thigh was made fully square, and the boot was squared up from the previous tapered boot of the series. The leg channel was again widened slightly, and the 'diamond grip' material from prior Velocity pads was replaced with grey Nash: much more durable and slightly less grip, thus better rotation. The strapping also changed, with a second strap at the knee.

I suspect given the squareness of the V4 toe, you're better off looking for a pair of V3's. However, the pads I think you'd most like are the Warrior Rituals: they are the true evolution of the Velocity line, since Warrior's designer, Pete Smith, made the Velocity for Vaughn back in the day, and they're a spectacular pad. Best of all, if you're strapped for cash and can't afford the custom pro Rituals, the senior pro pads are an insanely good deal. The Rituals are basically a perfected Velocity pad, and they are by miles the most durable pad design I've ever seen: the only pad on earth that doesn't wear out along the inside of the boot.

Vaughn is now starting to get some design advice from Glenn Miller, who gave up his own outfit to run their US plant, but that won't pay dividends until next year's line; the V5 is already heading out.

[willoe 0]

There really needs to be a pad trial program, with some many options and prices out there.. Haha.. Ill try and find a pair of Rituals to try out in in a store, however in SoCal there aren't many stores near me that Im finding carrying them. I haven't seen may people wearing them, any idea on the rebound kick on the warriors? They look very flat faced like my Revokes, and those things can kick the puck back out to the blue line on a some what weak shoot... Another thing I liked about the V3's, pucks seemed to bounce and die about 3-5 feet.

Again thanks for the time in helping and old dog learn some new tricks..

[Gwyren 0]

Hockey Monkey has a few sets in store.

I have not used them but the story goes that the Rituals are supposed to give hard rebounds, similar to Reebok Premier Series/Revoke pads.

[Law Goalie 147]

Definitely try HM, or just check Warrior's site: they should have a dealer list, and failing that, you can just call and ask, and I'm sure they can tell you who has demo and pre-release sets.

There actually are a few pad trial programs kicking around; California, I couldn't say.

Just to be precise, a pad with a flat face won't necessarily yield high-energy rebounds. There are a few reasons why Revokes (and other Reebok pads, for instance) can boot the puck out pretty far. First, the face of the pad is a layer of synthetic leather, a 3/16" layer of very soft, insubstantial open-cell foam, and a 1/4" layer of HD110 - high-density foam that is very hard and very stiff. Marc-Andre Fleury, however, has a layer of low-density foam put in front of this HD layer, precisely so his rebounds can be a little softer. The face of the pad is exactly the same shape (flat), but the rebounds are softer with 'Fleury foam.' The primary reason why your V3's soak up a lot of the energy from the shot is from all that LD and shredded foam in the pad body, which is not only low-density as well, but, because it's shredded, will shift around every time it's hit to absorb even more kinetic energy. The Rituals are not as hard as the Reebok pads, but not as soft as the V3's: they're more or less the same as the V4/V5's in terms of how the puck respond, but vastly superior in every other respect.

The other part of rebound energy is how the pad sits on your leg, and how you use it. If a pad is quite loose, that bit of 'wiggle room' can take a little more energy of the out the shot. However, a pad that's very tight to the leg (ie. a closed leg channel worn snugly) can make the pad responsive enough that the goalie, provided he gets a really good read on the shot, can draw his leg back through the moment of impact and reduce the rebound significantly. Even with my Reebok pads (custom NHL-spec P1s), I can drop a respectable point-shot inside 6 inches, but it was *much* easier to do that with my old Aubin Bauer Supremes, which were softer in the face, segmented throughout, and fit closer to the leg.

However, from a technical perspective, 3-5 foot rebounds are a disaster. That's too far to be easily smothered without lunging, but just enough distance to open up plenty of space, including the vertical angle, and not enough to react if the guy really wires it; if you anticipate perfectly, you might get it, but it's a really, really dangerous distance -- and he'd still have the option of a one- or two-step deke around you. Generally speaking, you either want it right at your feet, within easy arm's reach and within the vertical coverage (or 'shadow') of your pad, or you want it *gone*: glass, boards, blueline. Those rare times when you know you're going to give up a rebound to a specific area and need to soften it a bit -- think a 2v2 with the PC clearly trying to pass off your weak-side pad to the other guy -- that should be a technical decision rather than something your pad does all the time.

Personal preference, as ever, wins out, but I would suggest that 3-5 foot rebounds, though perhaps psychologically comfortable, are not ideal.