I gave a mini review of the pads the other day when they came in but had not gotten to use them yet, yesterday I got too
I had a root canal at 8am yesterday so I had to take the day off work, I called around and found a drop-in session about an hour from here so after my R.C I shot over to the rink. I got there about hour before the drop-in started but I asked the Zamboni dude if it was ok to take the ice and he had no problem with it so I had the ice all to myself for about 45 minutes. I worked on up and down drills, telescoping and retreating(that Y thing for brekaways), and skated alot. I am happy to report that the squared tops and larger pads did not affect my ability to move at all. I am glad that I did not get the second boot strap, I had no problem with the way they felt and I like to wear my pads tight.
Drop-in started about 11:30 and I was glad to see there were pleanty of guys with good hard shots that showed up. I know some have wondered about the protection in the shin area; I did not feel one shot(in a painful way anyway). I used the non-traditional strapping method and it worked great. The top part of the pads fill the five hole and allowed me to go into a much wider butterfly with my legs without giving up any middle coverage. I have always had a wide stance and with the way I had the color scheme done, I was told that my 5 hole looked huge but I just kept snapping the pads shut and was only beaten once down low. These pads just seal with the ice perfectly. One thing that did surprised me was the stability I had in a sliding butterfly. It felt like I was on a track.
Drop-in lasted 2 hours and I had a ton of fun breaking these bad boys in and got alot of really cool puck marks. Now they look like goal pads.... ok they are starting to anyway. If anyone had any questions, feel free
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