silver-state-knights

[silver-state-knights]

just waive the waiting period and put Flower in the HHOF immediately. no i don’t care that he’s not retired yet the man is an icon. put him in. write “tried to beat Binnington’s stupid ass” on the plaque under all his records and stuff. c’mon.

[silver-state-knights]

me seeing NHLers with currently unreleased gear like 👀

[silver-state-knights]

"no come on it'll be good" and he was right

[silver-state-knights]

ok so nobody asked, but in the absence of some good pictures of pride tape warmups from the sens pride game this weekend, I've been looking into the few pictures that are available and stumbled onto this unidentified player who made the absolute insane decision to use pride tape on their socks??

and i decided i need to know who it is.

the easiest way to start narrowing down the player's identity are the skates. they seem to be Bauer Vapor HyperLite Skates, which 8 sens players use, according to GearGeek.com

we can easily rule out josh since he's been on ir for months, but for everyone else remaining, we need to look at the tape job on the socks and the glimpse of stick

brannstrom, kastelic, tkachuk, stützle and batherson are out because they don't use a candy cane-type of tape

which leaves us with julien gauthier and claude giroux. from there, i zoomed in extremely closely on many, many pictures of their sticks t try to match them to the sliver of stick we see in that first picture and

it's claude giroux. 35 year old, flyers captain of 10 years claude giroux wrapped his shins in a single circumference's worth of pride tape for. pizzaz? support? leadership?

[silver-state-knights]

[Video ID: A video of Laurent Brossoit Stretching in before overtime in the Vegas Golden Knights vs Calgary Flames games from February 23, 2023. He looks like a wiggly cat. /end ID]

[silver-state-knights]

are y’all gonna take us seriously yet

[silver-state-knights]

the kirill kaprizov cutting his tongues off his skates thing is so fucked up

[silver-state-knights]

I’d love to hear more about Carey Price and the CCM goalie gear!

hey there! thanks a bunch for the ask! i know its been sitting a while but now i just remembered to get around to this!

Carey Price (and many other Habs goaltenders over the years, tbh) has been very influential on the world of goaltender equipment in general, but especially CCM's catalogue as he was one of their longtime "faces" of their goalie equipment and arguably one of their most notable (besides Marc-Andre Fleury for awhile there, too). he originally started with Vaughn in the early days of his career, as we can see here:

Vaughn at this time was much bigger in goalie in the NHL than they are these days, the only real notable goalie they have now as far as I know is Jonathan Quick. But, if you're CCM and you're seeing a lights out, absolutely killer goaltender like Carey Price starting to emerge in the mid 2000s, you're likely going to want him to wear your stuff, with your logo, right? If this goalie is wearing your stuff, everyone who plays and wants to be like him will likely try to emulate him, right?

Hockey brands will often send pros equipment tuned to their specs in an attempt to get them to switch all the time for this exact reason- but I can't really think of any other instance of a brand going as far as CCM did in the case of Carey Price.

To understand what I'm specifically talking about, I have to first introduce the concept of break angle- this is a term in goalie equipment that refers to the way and at what angle a goalie glove/trapper closes. The three you'll often hear of are the 580 break (90° closure), the 590 break (60° closure), and the 600 break (50° closure). No two gloves are the same, so a 600 break from Vaughn will be different than a 600 break from Bauer, and so on and so forth.

Here's a chart that should give a better visual on what each of the three look like and how they differ:

At this time, Carey Price's glove with Vaughn was most similar to what we would call CCM's 600 break today. They actually created the 600 break in order to help Price transition out of the Vaughn glove he was using at that time. As you can see with what appears to be one of his first CCM sets, the Extreme Flex III that he had circa 2012-2013, the glove is very similar looking to the one he had with Vaughn:

Now, some bonus info because I think it's funny: Carey Price no longer uses a 600 break, and has since switched to the 590 as of a couple years ago (something that caused a bit of controversy at that time). He also is no longer with CCM, as CCM Goalie cut ties with the Lefevre family a couple years ago now. The Lefevre family, who are well renowned for their excellence and innovation in goaltender equipment. Where they go, most NHL goalies will follow. Lefevre is now working with True Temper, and that explains the severe uptick in NHL goaltenders using their pads, gloves, and blockers.

Here's some of his True setups because I think they're neat:

So yeah! Basically, TLDR: CCM invented the 600 break angle, a break angle that is still popular at the retail level to this day, specifically for Carey Price to switch to their equipment from Vaughn.

[silver-state-knights]

"between mandolese and søgaard, ottawa's got nearly thirteen feet worth of goaltenders"

sure?

[silver-state-knights]

i had to edit that Carey Price post slightly because Tumblr is a fuck and didnt save my changes before i published them </3 but its good now! enjoy friends!

[silver-state-knights]

I’d love to hear more about Carey Price and the CCM goalie gear!

hey there! thanks a bunch for the ask! i know its been sitting a while but now i just remembered to get around to this!

Carey Price (and many other Habs goaltenders over the years, tbh) has been very influential on the world of goaltender equipment in general, but especially CCM's catalogue as he was one of their longtime "faces" of their goalie equipment and arguably one of their most notable (besides Marc-Andre Fleury for awhile there, too). he originally started with Vaughn in the early days of his career, as we can see here:

Vaughn at this time was much bigger in goalie in the NHL than they are these days, the only real notable goalie they have now as far as I know is Jonathan Quick. But, if you're CCM and you're seeing a lights out, absolutely killer goaltender like Carey Price starting to emerge in the mid 2000s, you're likely going to want him to wear your stuff, with your logo, right? If this goalie is wearing your stuff, everyone who plays and wants to be like him will likely try to emulate him, right?

Hockey brands will often send pros equipment tuned to their specs in an attempt to get them to switch all the time for this exact reason- but I can't really think of any other instance of a brand going as far as CCM did in the case of Carey Price.

To understand what I'm specifically talking about, I have to first introduce the concept of break angle- this is a term in goalie equipment that refers to the way and at what angle a goalie glove/trapper closes. The three you'll often hear of are the 580 break (90° closure), the 590 break (60° closure), and the 600 break (50° closure). No two gloves are the same, so a 600 break from Vaughn will be different than a 600 break from Bauer, and so on and so forth.

Here's a chart that should give a better visual on what each of the three look like and how they differ:

At this time, Carey Price's glove with Vaughn was most similar to what we would call CCM's 600 break today. They actually created the 600 break in order to help Price transition out of the Vaughn glove he was using at that time. As you can see with what appears to be one of his first CCM sets, the Extreme Flex III that he had circa 2012-2013, the glove is very similar looking to the one he had with Vaughn:

Now, some bonus info because I think it's funny: Carey Price no longer uses a 600 break, and has since switched to the 590 as of a couple years ago (something that caused a bit of controversy at that time). He also is no longer with CCM, as CCM Goalie cut ties with the Lefevre family a couple years ago now. The Lefevre family, who are well renowned for their excellence and innovation in goaltender equipment. Where they go, most NHL goalies will follow. Lefevre is now working with True Temper, and that explains the severe uptick in NHL goaltenders using their pads, gloves, and blockers.

Here's some of his True setups because I think they're neat:

So yeah! Basically, TLDR: CCM invented the 600 break angle, a break angle that is still popular at the retail level to this day, specifically for Carey Price to switch to their equipment from Vaughn.

[silver-state-knights]

when matthew tucks his hair behind his ears >

[silver-state-knights]

hi who wants to hear the latest gear thing making me insane

[silver-state-knights]

who am i kidding, of course you do!

another one about goalies, particularly goalie skates. this one isn't exactly NHL related, but i found it super fascinating. so, the story goes:

i was at work the other day, and saw someone with the same model goalie skate that i have (True's TF9 model). they were coming in for a sharpen, and i was looking one of them over, and i noticed something very very strange: True shifted the blade holder on this skate very far to the inside of the boot (to the point that the inside part of the holder is hanging off the boot slightly), and didn't mount it dead center like most skates are (player or goalie).

wondering if this was a thing with this customer's particular skate, or if it was just A Thing (tm) that True did with their goalie skates, I looked at mine when I got home and noticed the same thing. I've been looking at every pair of them that's come in since, and all the same- so it's clearly most likely deliberate.

but what am I talking about when i say this? luckily, i have some visuals for yall!

so here's what a typical skate's holder alignment will look like (skate: Bauer Vapor X2.9 Goalie):

most skates on the market, player or goalie, have a very big focus on making sure the blade holder is completely even with the boot. if you look at this Bauer skate's alignment, you'll see that there is pretty much the same amount of boot on either side of the holder. this is for what are probably obvious reasons, you don't want your holders to be offset on your skates (unless in very specific situations), because your skating will be wonky as a result and could be much harder than it needs to be.

well, if you're a skater, anyways. this is a very skater-based mindset (in my opinion).

now let's look at the True TF9 goalie skate:

notice the very large margin of boot on the outside of the boot (left side of the skate in this picture). you can almost see a bit of that "hang off" i was talking about, too.

So you may be wondering, why do this? Why would True decide to purposely mount their goalie skate holders off center like this when nobody else with a goalie skate on the market is doing it?

The very basic answer is (most likely) to help goaltenders be able to "plant" their inside edges easier while still being able to stay in a lowered stance / in the butterfly. It is much easier to plant this edge while you're down in the butterfly if you barely have to lift your foot to do it, and it also helps you seal the five hole much easier! if your skate is already making contact with the ice as soon as you just turn your foot slightly upright, you'll have a much easier time pushing across the crease and you'll do it much more efficiently than if you have to lift your leg half way up to even get your blade to dig into the ice.

Basically if this skate was on my foot, the part of the holder hanging off would be on my inside edge. this is a very critical edge that you use in hockey in general, but doubly so in goaltending- some goalies even purposely cut their skates unevenly to make their inside edges taller (this is called an "A-Trap" sharpen, and it is very very common amongst goalies in the NHL). if you're almost exclusively using your inside edge as a goaltender anyway, why not push that holder inward to have yourself in a better stance from the jump before you even have to think about positioning your body?

The angle that you have to keep your leg at in order to push off with your goalie skate is called the "attack angle", and having the blade holder shifted inward like this gives you a much better attack angle with much less work than a standard, centered holder setup would.

hi who wants to hear the latest gear thing making me insane

[silver-state-knights]

rosters come and go but 2015 Habs core feelings are forever I GUESS

[silver-state-knights]

hi who wants to hear the latest gear thing making me insane

[silver-state-knights]

played the flames and won 19-4

stats for this game: 3 G, 2 A, 5 TP, +/- +10, 8 PIM

first hatty for mister lariviere!