Miller goalie equipment

[husainjc]

Has there been a thread on Miller goalie equipment? 

I remember Daniel Berthiaume wore Miller equipment with the Jets in the late 1980s.

Then a friend of mine worked at their equipment making facility (in Surrey, B.C.) in the late 1990s, though I suspect under different ownership.

 

 

[Scythe]

I got these used and wore them for awhile. Heavy ..  no rebounds.  

 

[ArdeFIN]

Joni 'Bona' Hallikainen just got his brand new custom made Miller pads month or two ago so Miller is alive and working, atleast some special projects. Bona has some pictures in Instagram atleast but I'm not there myself so couldn't get any better view on them. Propably can be found in Facebook too.

[Naz]

Glenn Miller is definitely actively producing gear.  He will build his traditional pads, also the blocker and trapper he produced in the late 80's.  Glenn will also do reproductions of the iconic Cooper GM21 trapper and Cooper blocker, also will do the Jofa Bourdon blocker.  He is reachable by private message on Facebook.

@husainjc, yes by the time your friend worked there Glenn was gone and Miller gear was being designed and produced by Paul Fricker (the owner of the original GSBB).  Glenn WAS involved in Miller in Surrey (actually Delta) when they started up that operation in about 1986 and made the Berthiaume pads there, also pads for Kirk McLean, Richard Brodeur, Alan Bester.  I had one of the first sets of pads he made when he came west from Michigan.  Got a skate cut on the toe roll within a week, so went to see him at the factory in Delta and sat and talked gear with him while he fixed the pad.

He is truly a master craftsman.

[beansbats]

Glenn has retired from Vaughn, and is back making his own old school gear in mid-Michigan.  He is very responsive on Facebook.  On another note, he fit me for my first set of custom pads in his Ann Arbor basement in 1981   I still have them.

[MrGoalie]

Yup, find him on Facebook.  He’s in the vintage gear group as well as a few others. My buddy just got a leather and deer hair set from him custom made.  
 

Glenn also made Great Saves pads and for many years made pads for Ed Belfour. 

[husainjc]

6 hours ago, Naz said:

Glenn Miller is definitely actively producing gear.  He will build his traditional pads, also the blocker and trapper he produced in the late 80's.  Glenn will also do reproductions of the iconic Cooper GM21 trapper and Cooper blocker, also will do the Jofa Bourdon blocker.  He is reachable by private message on Facebook.

@husainjc, yes by the time your friend worked there Glenn was gone and Miller gear was being designed and produced by Paul Fricker (the owner of the original GSBB).  Glenn WAS involved in Miller in Surrey (actually Delta) when they started up that operation in about 1986 and made the Berthiaume pads there, also pads for Kirk McLean, Richard Brodeur, Alan Bester.  I had one of the first sets of pads he made when he came west from Michigan.  Got a skate cut on the toe roll within a week, so went to see him at the factory in Delta and sat and talked gear with him while he fixed the pad.

He is truly a master craftsman.

Wow @Naz thanks! Yes Paul Fricker, I remember his name, though I never met him. He was my friend's boss. He played golf. He also had a lacrosse line too for a while. 

After posting I did a little research and thought perhaps Glenn Miller and the Miller in Delta (not Surrey) were two different companies because Glenn Miller appears to be in Michigan.

Back in the 1980s there used to be a lot of hockey magazines, I remember one called "Great Goalies" that I  would  beg my mum to buy me at WH Smith Books. And I used to go to Save-On-Foods and read Grant Fuhr's "Fuhr on Goaltending" because they didn't have it at the library. I would collect  O-Pee-Chee hockey cards and I loved the goalies, I remember Daniel Berthiaume, John Vanbiesbrouck, Pete Peters, Mike Liut, Bob Mason, John Hayward, Pokey Reddick, Troy Gamble, Ron Tugnutt and others because I though the equipment was so cool. I remember after Les Canadiens won the Cup in 1986 we all worshipped Patrick Roy and he was on the cover of O-Pee-Chee sticker book.

One year the Esso gas station had a sticker album of all the greatest players and so that's where we had to get gas. My very first hockey game was in March of 1987, Oilers visiting Canucks at Pacific Coliseum, ticket bought at Esso (yes, in the 1980s you could buy Canucks tickets at Esso!) and my two favourite players, Gretzky and Kurri, both scored twice. 

I didn't play ice hockey as a child but we all played road hockey in Vancouver, and I saved-up and bought D&R goalie pads, blocker and catcher from a store called the Goalnet in North Vancouver. The owner let me take two old catalogs, one Cooper and one D&R. I used to stare at them for hours imagining having all those cool gloves and shin pads and hockey pants. When I was a teenager I got a job as a housekeeper at GM Place and with one of my first paycheques bought hockey equipment, it was like being nine years old all over again. I went to all the hockey stores that my mum didn't let me go into (Larry's Skate Shop, Time Out Sports, Cyclone Taylor's, Hogarth's Sport Check) and carefully selected each piece of equipment.

Sorry for this nostalgic trip down memory lane of Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s...

[husainjc]

@Naz - What is GSBB?

 

Here's more Vancouver hockey nostalgia. I used play with Richard Dean Anderson at North Shore Winter Club when the Stargate cast would rent the rink in the late 90s. I swear I set Dean Anderson up on the best goal of his life.

Tiger Williams also used to skate at NSWC.

Corey Hirsch had a gf with the biggest, let's say, blockers. 

Donald Brashear had seasons tickets to the Grizzlies and would come to every game with a different stunning date.

I met Wayne Gretzky at the All Star game in 1998. One of his sons, either Ty or Trevor, was throwing a fit because he wanted Sergei Federov's autograph but Federov had left. Wayne was just like any other parent trying to appease a demanding child. Except the most noticeable thing about Gretz was how rich he looked. 

Pavel Bure turned down a little boy who asked for an autograph.

[keeperton]

10 minutes ago, husainjc said:

@Naz - What is GSBB?

Goalie Store Bulletin Board. Back in the early to mid 00's there was GSBB and the Don Simmons forums as the main websites for goalie related sort of things. There was a third one I'm struggling to remember the name of, but one of the admins gave me a Gmail invite when that was the only way to get them.

[husainjc]

1 minute ago, keeperton said:

Goalie Store Bulletin Board. Back in the early to mid 00's there was GSBB and the Don Simmons forums as the main websites for goalie related sort of things. There was a third one I'm struggling to remember the name of, but one of the admins gave me a Gmail invite when that was the only way to get them.

Thanks! 

This website is great.