ArdeFIN

From what I've heard they basically (speaking of Team Finland stories) lived in a hotel inside some sort of bubble, and while the hotel was (said by a player) about 50 meters away from Rogers Place, they still had to use the bus transit. Team was healthy when arrived, had Corona tests every morning, and only facing the opponents(?) on ice and each other the rest of the time. So there had to be very minimal chance for any kind of infection, if this bubble was intact. If the staff was, and should've been, in the same bubble it doesn't make any difference using mask or whatnot. The Corona infection has to come from somewhere. You really think any of them coaches used the mask inside the locker room? And yes, that said half-assing the mask is as good as just leave it unused. Lets see how things are in the spring when there should be mens WCS here in Finland. What variant is ruining the world then. Omikron probably is over by then.

Just to make sure, the NME VTX and 960 (whatever extension) are the same construction, just fitting different shapes of head? I cannot fit my head inside Profile and the NME fits my head shape perfectly. Not much about gear sitings anymore in this conversation, sorry!

Would be nice, and easier to comment about if you'd take a picture or two with all the parts laid down next to each other in orderly fashion. Looking at pictures of now, what is the orange foam material, why is it outside of the plastic. Seems pretty thick too. I've never taken the felt away, it sort of has a function in how the glove works too and not only as padding. If needed then add extra padding to fingers and palm area. Thumb is usually pretty well protected, but it might be needed to add a layer under thumb too, to the pocket side and under.

I might be wrong but I don't think it's so much the surface fabric that matters on hot rebounds. It's more about what is under the fabric. Plastic, carbon, sheet thickness, foam under the firm sheet etc.

Action time then. First some data of how it was. Picture of the Premier torso over AB. You can notice right away that the AB neck opening is a lot smaller than on Premier? Still I don't know of Premier having a problem with neck hanging. So everything about that fights against my thoughts of the AB having long shoulder pieces that lead to neck hanging low. Next thing to check is how the Premier back plate and shoulder were before modifying them more. Easy to notice how the shoulder area is way too much back even with my narrow shoulders inside it would be almost the same. And yet again the shoulder pieces are from Premier. One picture about the attachment of the shoulder parts. The shoulder plate on the right is about where it should, but notice the top part of the cup which is rigid (plastic?) sheet. It rises far over the imagined shoulderline which might be one reason for the whole thing to flow downwards. Then some detaching, cutting, thinking and designing. Hardest thing here is that there is no clean return to point zero when you begin cutting. And at the same time it's difficult to measure and try to fit things without cutting and sewing together. So the only obvious thing to do is cut some 40mm of material out and then sew everything back together and see how it worked out. Then the final setup. I also sewed two lines to help the shoulder area to flex around my shoulder shape. Once again these are more of a good guess than proper fitting but this shouldn't be so exact and even necessary. Then the other part was done with copied measurements. I got the parts sewn to the torso too and found out that atleast the shoulder cups on Premier parts are awkwardly wide now. I cannot really figure how these were put together on Premier to keep them in line with torsos shoulder parts as the edges don't match without forcing them together. That might be the way it was done by CCM but is mostly just poor desing of the parts. The hanging neck is pretty much done now and the head opening is very small. Not tight as I could easily get my head through and the fit is pleasant. Hopefully I got it sorted now.

Not bad choices you have there, I'd add Warrior G5, Vaughn SLR2/3 maybe, Bauer with both Hyperlite and Ultrasonic, Brians is solid too. (True if available, wait time is long for custom models atleast) And a lot more from smaller manufacturers. Really hard to give any more precise help as we all like just so much different things. What is the most important in my opinion is get the exact right size for yourself. It may be different numbers from each manufacturer, but the actual size is what matters. And also when you find something that suits your style, look for the 2nd hand, there's a lot of almost new sets available too so might get some discount that way.

So have been in with my FrankenCCM now for about 5 times and it's been mostly nice time. It fits me pretty well, it's lightweight, mobility is no issue what so ever while playing and protection has been good, no stingers through. Mostly, because I've gotten two hits to the same clavicle within these few icetimes. And never before I've noticed getting hit to clavicles. At first I just thought it was an odd shot and my actions (jump a bit for high puck etc...) caused it to happen. I then added some padding and modified my neck protector which is compilation of RBK and Vaughn. Now I had the Warrior RX3Pro neck protector with me and again I got clavicle shot I was like what the hell is happening. It didn't hurt this time which of thanks go to the Warrior. But after getting back into locker room I thought that now I have the gear on me it's time to go next to a mirror and take a photo to get some idea. As can be seen the neck protector is really snug around my neck and the clavicle area also protected. But the problem is that you shouldn't see that much of the clavicle area at all. Notice at this point that the picture is taken from down pointing upwards so it was even worse when seen from my eye level. So the problem with the C/A is a bit more complicated and yet to be throughly examined. But from the picture already and some visual inspection done seems like the shoulder parts have flown down, or I did actually sew the Premier shoulders too high on to the torso of the AB. On the other side I have the setting on the velcroes maxed out to highest setting possible. Annoying it is because I think that the sewn in height should be exactly same that was on the Premier before project. (AB and Premier torsos are close to each other on neck area) And the Premier didn't suffer from neck hanging. This issue is evident from looking at the shoulder pads of the Premier (on top), on the picture they seem to be at 45 to 60 degrees from vertical but actually it was even more than 45 degrees to horizontal when I lifted the torso upright. To fix the issue I'll detach the shoulder parts and sew them some 50mm downwards to pull the torso up. This should also move the back parts higher and give some room to loosen the adjustments of the shoulders and floaters. Sidenote, I also need to balance and tighten the elastics running from the torso to my pants as a suspenders. There seems to be too much slack too.

Now with two hours of use I like this one more than the Kova. Main reason for that is this one is softish on collar area. Like it should I don't even notice it while playing. And with one medium snapshot to the clavicle where I got stung (with RBK-Vaughn before upgrade) last time, now it felt, gasp, uh oh, well nothing bad happened and the play continued. So the Warriors specific shock-what-ever -material does the job pretty well. The collar is a bit too stiff to my liking and as it is the shape is not the best it could be. Maybe even rounding the top inside edge of the foam would help. And by no means it is terrible, not even bad. Just so much that it isn't completely un-noticeable there. The foam does soften when heated up to body temp and that helps the clavicle area to mold really well to body shapes, and does not make any pressing feeling that I had with Kova on which the plate is very stiff. Seems to me that I'm going to use this one from now on, having the RBK-Vaughn hybrid as a realiable backup. I'll come back here when I have something to tell about the durability of the materials on this Warrior RX3Pro.

Knee blocks have been changed for some reason? They are different size to each other too. The slide surface seems to have the 45deg cut on it. Custom ordered with Jenpro slide surfaces?

What comes to padding the forearm is the exact same as bicep. The difference is that you get a lot more hits to the biceps compared to forearms that are kind of behind the gloves mostly. I only remember a few hits to forearms except those side of the arm area hits that occur when reaching far out for a desperate save attempt. Biceps do get hits when you just try to passively make a wall to stop the puck.

These (or the alike pair) were just a few days ago in a Finnish goalie group in Facebook and I understood that those were sold&sent to US/Canada? There is an idea in these and at the same time they just look annoying.

Heatgun at 300 deg celsius and small board pieces with clamps to make the long straight edges. Curved lines and more rounded corners I do with same heat gun & setting and bare fingers wet with cold tap water. Little by little it'll mold and I rarely burn my fingers at all. The 2mm thick sheet cools down quickly when you have cold tap water on your fingers. Takes some time too but not as much as you would think. The 2mm thick PE is really nice to mold and bend as it heats throughly pretty quick and even. The thicker the plastic is the harder it is to heat enough and still not too much so that it won't melt completely. If it melts it'll be really hard to re-form back to any decent looks. But it might still work well even if it looked toasted.

The 590 Pro Koho has the floaters over the sides. Other than that there is hardly any difference to AB Pro.

Now the pictures before I forget it again. The plate is as simple as I could imagine it to be, while still the edges were a bit of a pain to bend. The top and bottom edges are higher and the two other edges are only so much bend that they don't catch on any skate etc cuts on the ice. This one is for Vaughn (LT88 or V6 I think) where the knee block is curved on "front" edge. 2mm thick PE here. And one really dark picture of my Warrior. I have to take one with more light but you should get the idea of it. If I remember right these are made of 3mm PE plate. LAce on the left is routed between the pad and knee stack and the right lace goes over the stack but under the top layer of the stack so it's not visible.

As mentioned in some other thread already, I've been using PE plates on my knee blocks for over two years now. Edges are bent up around the knee block and I added holes to the bent edge and tied the plate in place with simple lace around the knee block. I've used 3mm and 2mm thick plates, but I don't see any reason why even 1mm thick wouldn't work. This is for PE, I don't know about the Lexan and how it reacts when cold. No matter where I looked I couldn't find any pictures, but tomorrow I'll take a few so you'll get some idea of it. I've only done two sets of these so far as they've worked flawless and there hasn't been any need to remake them.

Continuing from what said, the foam accepts bending slowly and even goes to almost double if you give it time to do so. But more interesting feature is that the foam returns to the original shape when the stress is relieved. Holding the plate on one edge the the other edge bent down and under, it has the strength to return to flat without any help. Even the throat collar tries to open out straight when I opened the velcro. The foam is double layered and it hard to tell if the layers are of different type of foam. The collar feels like the inside foam would be a bit softer and easier to press fingertip into the foam while outside layer feels more stiff. Productionvise it might be the same material all over as it would save a lot of cost while having only one type of foam sheet to use. The smaller wedged parts over the shoulder are cut from the top layer and only bottom layer is intact. The covering fabric is then sewn through and foam is basically cut also. With few bending moves all the small parts were separated. I think it was also meant to happen that the small pieces are on their own to help the plate to form better over the shoulder area.. I'll add some pictures later when I get them sorted. Edit: faster than I thought, here we have some details to explain what I tried to write out.

For the Black Friday I pulled the trigger and bought me one of these X3 Pro "clavicle guard" (as they've named it on the package). The first impression while inside the plastic back. Yeah looks like Kova, slightly different details and no plastic sheets like inside Kova. Feels stiff so makes me wonder about the foams inside. It was straight in from -15 degrees Celsius so I thought it might also be a bit stiff from being cold as foams have that feature. Package opened and the first feels: - The fabric seems really thin and weak, not going to last a long time atleast if you build a lot of hair/beard around you neck and chin. - The foam is like some memory foam, even when temperature has risen to room level and still when heated between my arms the foam is really stiff to change the form or bend. Most surprised about that as I thought it might be more like the gel foam or maybe even D3O that kind of flows from shape to other shape. - Only on the neck area I could feel the foam being double layered, and overall feeling of the neck 'ring' is a lot like Kova protector has. Feels really good being on hand, has that same slowly adapting feel of the collar area foams, but maybe more stiff and firm. That might also come from being sewn to the round shape of the collarbone sheets opening for the neck. They mention on the video above that the foam is a new type. I was hoping for there to be a soft foam against the clavicle area but there isn't. Neck area is good to be a stiff ring as it shouldn't be in direct contact to neck and also take the hits energy in and not let it go through to neck area. So the design seems to be good, quality from the first impressions is not in the high end, craftmanship is normal with nothing to mention on the downside. The issue I had with Kova was that the clavicle area was so stiff plate that it rubbed against my clavicle bones and that was exaggerated with the C/A weight. Also the collar around my neck wasn't the shape I would've liked, not interfering anything but just not unnoticeable. I have to admit here that I only tried the Kova for two times but I wasn't able to dial the feeling at all. It just felt too much no matter what I tried. It is certain that it would've molded on me in time ie. broke in but I just wasn't keen to do it. It was affecting my playing having to thing of that feeling all the time. Now I have some shoulder problems to add to all other problems so I might not see the ice as a goalie for some time. Also the local Covid situation is going bad and we are under 20 people limits starting next week so there might be some icerink close-up times ahead. But I'll give this X3 protector some tryouts when I'm on my snowwiS project to get some idea how this one adapts when on use. Anyone else that has this in use already?

@dreadlocked1 Well that's about exact setup I had in my mind, direct transition from my tucked-in setup. I'll have a "service" routine for the C/A and pants before I'll take them into use. Just to wash them through as previous owner hadn't lately, and also add a few mods like the belly loop inside, check all the elastics and what else.

Been using the PE knee block plate for two years now and wouldn't go back to Jenpro/Speedskin/etc. Only the Vinyl wrap from Varusteverstas/Kova is comparable. Superior slide from new ice to rough snowy surface and easy to control the slide amount with edgework. Actually I've been using the toebox or shoe edge to control the speed, that happens naturally so that I don't even think about it while playing.

A few of you have mentioned tying pants and C/A using the loop, that is on the outside of C/A belly area?? How do you do that, as while I tuck my C/A with my Warrior pants I cannot figure out how I could go untucked and still use the outside loop. Ofcourse if you use the lowest eyelets on pants then maybe but I would still see it restricting someway. But alltogether every reply says that keep it simple, and that is what I am aiming to. I was actually planning to add a loop inside the C/A to tie with pants with some elastic rope etc just the way I do now while tucking things. Back side I would probably go with the same elastic as I have now as it just feels so good. But I'll have to try the pants on before I exclude the suspenders as I am 140lbs /180cm and the pants are size L there might be some struggle to get them snug. I don't really like the pants or C/A to be tight, even snug might be at the limit. Difficult to say now that I think of it. This will definitely be an interesting journey. @dreadlocked1 Can you take a bit wider picture of whole composition, makes it easier to understand the locations of the loops and the setup that way.

Question as it is. I bought cheap set of snowwiS 996 C/A and pants and as the C/A is a bit too long on torso I thought why the hell not and start trying out without tucking the C/A. So give me some insight on how you do it, any special tricks or things to notice? I'll gather up my own style at the end of it but need a good heads up to start from. I'd prefer to not use suspenders which I do have available and use the C/A as suspenders.

This was my first thought too seeing the buckles. About BOA, it'll be there right when someone invents how it is going to survive the puck and stick hits. Without breaking or opening up accidentally. I've seen some people taping their Brians gloves BOA ring to prevent it from popping open after making a save of a hard shot.

That is the description of a perfect fit. Most of the C/A are really flexible when you try the sleeves etc. But the story changes when you put it on and the flex points don't match your body, or the other way. With my FrankenCCM I made a lot of testing and modding and from really awkward C/A I made a tailor made piece for my measurements. And it really is flexible and protective now, the flexibility was badly missing before the project. So fitting the C/A right is the key to success. This really is becoming a sort science and it actually is except atleast I don't have any formulas to calculate anything.

Good choice to sell. They still have more value in the markets than I would give them. The design is poor and has only been renewed with Axis and Eflex5, atleast so much that you can say something is changed.

I just started a journey with P2.9 to find out what one should do to make it work. I'll make a topic to the "Mods" when I get a bit further with it. So far dismantled the whole pocket and T and without those parts the glove is butter. A terrible piece of gear to be honest, but it will be improved.