Hello all,
I'm Craig, 6'0" 210lbs. I'm coming up on 29 years old, but as they say "It's not the years, it's the mileage". I like movies, animals, and women who aren't afraid to really speak their mind. Er... whoops, wrong forum, back to hockey.
I was born in Vancouver, but spent grades 1 through 7 in NY state and Connecticut. As such, I had the crippling misfortune of never playing hockey. I played pretty much every sport but hockey. I played catcher in baseball and was pretty good at it.
In 2002 and 2003, I took a beginners co-ed hockey course. It was lots of fun, and I was hooked. I've been playing defense since then. A couple months ago, my beer league team was playing a very weak team in the playoffs, so I traded gear with our goalie. His gear was way, way too big, falling apart, and stank like death, but I had an awesome time! My girlfriend came out to watch the spectacle, and I wound up getting a 14 shot shutout (only a couple saves were notable).
I know I should have quit while I was a head, but I jumped in head-first. My plan was to get most of the gear used and buy new what I had to. I found this forum and spent hours and hours an hours on here searching and searching and searching, trying to figure out what I needed/wanted. Went to a few brick and mortars to try gear on to get an idea, then back to GSBB for more research. I looked on these classifieds and craigslist, but eventually came to the decision that I was going to buy pretty much everything new. It came down to how much did I want to buy twice vs once, how much longer would new last, and how much did I value gear that didn't stink.
I wound up picking up the following gear from several different stores locally. I think I've done alright:
Mask: Eddy GT Ultimate (Maltese gel on order)
Skates: Graf 750 Goaler Pro
Sticks: Sherwood 9950 27" Paddle
C/A: Vaughn Epic 8600
Pads: Vaughn Velocity 7400
Trapper: Vaughn Velocity 7400
Blocker: Vaughn Velocity 7400
Pants: Vaughn XP Custom
Jock: Vaughn Velocity 7500
Knee: Vaughn VKP 8000 (on order)
Neck/Clav: Maltese Combo (on order)
It seems I'm quite the Vaughn fan, but I got a very sweet deal on the 7400 set and the pants, jock, and C/A just happened to be the most comfortable that I tried on (each from different stores too). I'll post more thoughts and questions in the appropriate threads for my various gear.
As for my abilities, I'm an absolute beginner obviously, but I do have quite a bit of natural instincts for the position (physically and mentally). I'm looking to get as much ice time as possible over the summer and find my way onto a second winter team as a goalie.
I took Paul Fricker's goalie clinic earlier this month. It was my first time getting all my gear on ice. It was pretty good, and I took away from it some good fundamentals to keep in mind as I teach myself how to move and play. I've had three sessions with pucks after that, and have been getting more comfortable and having more fun each time. Though I do have two large bruises on my lower thighs from two of the sessions already (note that my knee pads are on order
), but that hasn't bothered me. As the man said: "Pain don't hurt".
The last thing I'll add to this opus is that I've noticed that for every ounce of experience I've been gaining over my short career, I've gotten more out of re-reading the advice and wisdom on this board. I'm hoping that will continue well on into the future.
Craig