The Little One had her first game as a year 1 Mite today. In reality, her first hockey game with a team. I somehow forgot to shoot in RAW and really butchered the photos, but nothing I can do about it now.

Hat Trick, all cleaning up garbage, including her own rebound.

Celebrating her first goal...
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Staying hydrated

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Getting some rest...

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Drop the puck!

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Celebrating goal 2...

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More celebration of goal II

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Little break away, approaching the goal.... Shot was stopped...

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But followed it and pushed it in for her hat trick...

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Pretty happy about her first game....

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All three of us in(at) the penalty box yesterday.....

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Awesome picks love the penalty box one.

Dude talk about brain fart. We have a girl on Micahs travel team. She's 8. They are Russian but they change her in the locker room. It totally slipped my mind. It reminded me the other day when they were changing her in the locker room and she was topless and it caught me by suprise She was on the team last year as well. Nobody really even thinks about it. Nobody takes bottoms off.
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Got his helmet decals on. He has his first jamboree with his club this Saturday night. I will be working so my dad will take him.
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He has been marked!

Nice.... How is he liking the Cascade(M11)? What are your thoughts now that he has had it for a bit?
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I like those high kidney pads on your daughter's shorts. After passing blood several times all the way through college, I wish that we had them. Glad to see the improved safety equipment making its way down to the real young players.
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My kid just got an M11, and played a pretty physical weekend in Detroit at the Warrior Invitational Tournament. At first I was a little hesitant because of the back plate that is used to tighten the helmet, but once the helmet is on and tight, it's not really a concern.

I like how light it feels and I know he likes the increased air flow. We have Cleveland coming down for games tomorrow, I'll see if I can get the wife to get a few pics of it in action (I am always relegated to music and timekeeping at home games!)
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I'm a gear hound....she is the benefactor of that....:-) She is not going to take any hits(intentional) at this age, but I figure the range of motion benefit, can't hurt. It is night and day from her old S3's. The reasoning for moving was restriction(she was getting tight in the legs), though the sizing is off. The Easton to the Bauers, these are huge(though on paper, it is the next move).....should have gone with the same size, which doesn't make sense.... Ahhh, they are not too bad...she is not shrinking.


How did the Detroit tourney go Scott? Love the new avatar!
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The boys went 2-2, but didn't make it out of pool play sadly. They lost the first 2, and won the second 2. The funny thing is, his team only has 14 players to begin with and 2 of those are goalies. 1 boy is out with an injury and didn't make the trip and after the first 2 losses another boy got sick and went home.

So for the final 2 games, they rolled 2 lines. It was insane, I'd loved to hear what those teams thought that were beaten with only 10 skaters.

Thanks about the avatar, it's a pic I took a couple weeks ago, and BlackSmyth converted it to the avatar for me.

The boys have Cleveland Lumberjacks coming down tomorrow and Sunday, so cross your fingers!
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So after finding this wiping down my skates after Stick & Puck yesterday....

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I wondered about getting the holders replaced, but then just decided on new skates. Unfortunately, with a size 13.5-14 foot depending on brand, I can't just go try a few different skates on at the LHS to see what tickles my toes. Started looking at closeout skates at the different online retailers, came down to some X50's and G5's Pulled the trigger on the G5's this morning.

Seriously wondering if they will fit length wise, depending on the chart you're looking at, they may be a little smaller than the CCM at a 12... In the end, the Little Man's 11W G5's will need to be replaced at some point, for $300 shipped, can't go wrong, even if they just go to him.

I am not sure if it is a big difference, but once you get to 12 in the Graf Skates, it comes with the Cobra NT2000 not the Cobra UltraLight 5000??? Mike???
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Micah rocks this shirt and its awesome
http://www.hockeymonkey.com/under-ar...e-top-yth.html
He's always camping in front of the net and gets crosschecked and hit with sticks a lot. Never bugs him. that shirt really fills in the gaps as the body moves. He loves it. We got it this summer because he was 5 running around against the 7-9 year olds who don't like a little kid screening their goalie. :-) The griptech $hit on it is cool also it really does help stuff stick in place. He only wears it for ice as roller there is not a lot of contact. Although he is usually the one getting talked to at roller for playing to physical.

EJ I noticed those pants were huge. I was going to ask if they were JR pants and not youth because them look big. How is the tailbone protection on those? Bauers always seem to have the least amount of tailbone padding of all the pants. I like the CCM/ Reebok pants and the Easton pants for tailbone and kidney pads. With that shirt though its much less of an issue on kidney and spine pad on the pants.

As to the holders. Those prolite 3 were some of the softest holders ever so anything is going to feel a lot stiffer. When I was playing I remember seeing that holder brake in a few games. Sometimes it was a puck in the skate once the dude was stopping. Sure it got cracked earlier on that one. If I remeber right the 5000 is just a different zytel(sp) mix. Supposed to be lighter and stiffer. Don't think most anyone here would notice much of a difference skating on either. You would need to be a high level skater to notice imho which I am not.
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On a seperate note today he played a roller game this morning. He is playing in a jamboree tonight for 2 hours. He is supposed to have ice skrim in the morning tomorrow and then roller practice for that travel roller team he's redshirting with. Dads taking him tonight I am at work. :-) The roller club is only charging us $20 a month to practice and be an alternate skater if they are short a kid for tournaments. Atleast he has no hockey non-wed every week.

What was really cool today at roller was not the two goals he got but his play off the puck. On Thursday at blackstars practice they worked on a breakout drill. Micahs job is to go to the half board as the kid circles behind the net call for the pass recieve it and feed a kid for the breakout. Everytime he was out there today and he saw a teammate was going to circle he busted as$ to the board called for pass and played it to a teammate. Watching him do this at his age was awesome and made me happy we made the decision to have him play up. If he had played down he would likely be doing the one man show crap.
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My kid isn't a huge goal scorer, the team has that area covered. But our team lacks grit, mainly due to the speed and skill, most of our boys don't have to be too physical, they just deke and avoid contact.

My kid on the other hand has found his calling on the team, he is a playmaker and all-around pest. Not the Sean Avery - Matt Cooke type of pest, you can't get away with that kind of crap in youth hockey, but my kid hits hard and finishes his checks and does a great job drawing penalties. He drew 3 penalties on the same kid in one game in Toledo a few weeks ago. He has a way of getting under your skin.

He has also developed a great knack for face-offs, over 3 games this weekend I bet he only lost 6 faceoffs. He did take an interference penalty and the other team started to figure him out in the 3rd game. He has this move where he ties up their stick, and swivels around to block off the other guy in the faceoff while moving the puck back to the point.

So while he isn't lighting up the lamp, he is up there on the team with assists and no one on the team is as physical as he is. He reminds me a lot of Lindros in his play, and although I didn't have a clear view of his faceoff interference penalty, (I do the timeclock and music so I can't see the corners very well) I imagined it was Lindros-like.

So he has been whining for a new stick, I teased him with the "Get me some goals and I'll get you a stick" line. Long story short...(too late!) he got 4 goals and 4 assists in the 3 games this weekend. Then he told what stick he wanted. Bauer APX, *or* if I wouldn't spend that much, Easton EQ50. Does anyone have experience with either of those sticks?

Next time I will put a limit on my bribery, like "Get me some goals and I will buy you a new stick with a manufacturer suggested retail price of $150.00 or less!"
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Love it, Scott.... My kind of player!

Just anf an FYI, Scott.... Icewarehouse.com is where I buy almost everything now... Flat 10% off everything in their club.... That is $20-25 a stick and free shipping... I shop for deals, but they are the standard....
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Ken Linsman had a great career with the nickname of the Rat and he didn't need to suffer contact too often, he just learned the art of pissing people off. Enjoyed the show when he played in Boston.:-):-)
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I'll have to check him out, never heard of him! I love nicknames, although my kid ended up wearing 88 (nothing to do with Lindros in the beginning), and he reminds me of Lindros a lot in his play style, Big C just doesnt suit him for a nickname. Other than the coaches kid, who is Jan 1st 1999 birthdate, my kid is the youngest on the team. I never compare him to the coaches kid cause the coach is a 6'6" Swede. He played junior hockey in Sweden and his kid is probably going to be as tall. My kid is dead in the middle of the road in height on the team, despite being 6-8 months younger than all of the other boys.

His name is Cameron, and of course it's just Cam most of the time (Yea, we named him after Cam Neely). I always liked the nickname Pat Verbeek had, "Little Ball of Hate", but Cam is most likely too big to have the word "Little" in his nickname.

I'll have to start working on a good nickname for him!
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Hockey Money sucks so bad.... Just got the call, "we don't actually have those skates..." I can't understand how places are so bad with their online inventory... Well, back to the drawing board....
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Well they screwed me on a pair of skates for the boy. Mixed blessing. How we found the Grafs.
His best friends dad also got screwed on a pair of skates and won't use them again.
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I have to say, I would have preferred G5's, but these came home from the LHS today... I was not going to pay retail to put G5's on my feet, so my options changed...

These are actually an 11D....which blows my mind, as I am coming from a CCM 12E that was nowhere near too big. I wouldn't cry if they were an 11.5, but it didn't bother me enough that I blinked about saying let's bake, sharpen and ring them up. As far as the D as opposed to the E....I have no answer.... They felt good before the bake....???

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Tried on a CCM U+10 in an 11, fit the same as you could imagine, though I still felt the Reebok was a little longer, though I assume that was just how my foot was lying in there. The Bauer Supreme and Vapor were MUCH shorter. The 11.5 felt like it would be a 10.5 in the Reebok....my foot wasn't close to getting in there length wise....



P.S. NOT A FAN of the Pump.... I cannot get past that it looks gimmicky...:-)
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