Gear Checks, Backhands & Beer League Survival

SPEAKER_00
0:00

Your fall season is probably getting ready to start shortly, and you probably haven't done anything with your hockey stuff or anything like that over summer besides keep it in your bag and throw it in the corner of your garage. This is going to be a rapid fire episode of a bunch of different things that you should have and can still do to get yourself ready for the new fall season. All right, on this episode of the Beer League podcast, like I said, this is going to be kind of a rapid fire just listing of stuff that you can and should be doing to get yourself ready for your upcoming fall season. Or if you've never, if this is your first season of Beer League, you can use this as a list of things to kind of get ready to know about and things to be doing uh before your season starts.

Cleaning and inspecting your gear

SPEAKER_00
0:51

Okay, starting off with equipment, deep clean and completely dry all your stuff. Um, you should be washing that stuff at least once a year, anyways, kind of regardless if it needs it or not. And I'm not talking about your undergarments, you should always be washing that after every game. I'm talking about your pads. You can wash just about everything in a washing machine or bathtub except for maybe your helmet and your skates. Those kind of can't really wash, but your skates, you should definitely be airing out, taking out the insoles, things like that. But everything else should be washed, everything should be wiped down, make sure everything's nice and dry, get rid of that gross hockey smell, make sure you have some kind of a spray that you can put on your gear. It can be anything from the fancy sprays that you buy in the store, or it can be all the kind of homemade concoctions that people have online that include like mixtures of cheap vodka and water, or rubbing alcohol and water to spray on your stuff. Doesn't matter, but get your stuff cleaned up. Definitely do that. While you're doing that, inspect all of your gear. I've had videos about cleaning stuff. I've had videos on how to inspect and repair a bunch of your gear. You know, look for things like torn straps, broken velcro, cracked plastic, uh loose stitching on things, buckles that are busted that snap on your helmet that you never got replaced, worn palms in your gloves, anything like that. Check it out, even if it doesn't need to be fixed, make note that it is something that is wearing down and you're gonna have to deal with at some point in the near future. That means it's also the perfect time to do some super basic maintenance on your hockey gear. You can do the stuff yourself. Uh check your skates. Like I said, take out your insoles, you should be taking out taking those out after every game, anyways. Check your runners, make sure that they are you know in okay shape, that they're not too worn down to a nub. I highly recommend popping them out of your skates and looking inspecting them and then putting them back into your skates. You can take out runners on pretty much any kind of uh modern skate. So pop it out, put it back in at least once. Uh definitely something you should do. You might not know your skate has been has been broken for the last year that you've had it, uh, and it's just been holding on for dear life. So find out now. Uh again, check those insoles, check rivets on your skates uh to make sure that they are still holding on good and haven't rusted out or having become loose. Quick, ease repair at most hockey shops that you can get done. Check for rust anywhere. You shouldn't have uh rust on the runners at all. Uh, if you have a little bit, that's okay. Definitely shouldn't be rusted out. Um after a sharpening, that should take care of it. Check the rivets, make sure they're not rusted so bad that you know they're gonna snap on you. That's again, I should do a little bit of skate maintenance during the year so you don't have to worry about this stuff. Skates are expensive, you don't know how to get new ones. Uh, definitely look at eyelets and laces. Are your laces threadbare? Should you get new laces? Do you need new laces? Check the eyelets, make sure that the eyelets aren't, you know, pulling through your uh skates because you pull them so tight or they've popped off or anything like that. Get those inspected. Again, that's something that you can pretty easily get repaired at most uh hockey stores that they can handle that for you. So don't have to get new skates, but find it out now versus having an eyelet, you know, rip through while you're playing uh your second game of the year and not now you're kind of scrambling for it. Check that stuff, check the tendon guards. Uh, they can get loose and crack. There's ways to repair those as well. You can buy kits for them, but check those. Um, tighten up everything, tighten up the stuff, the hardware on all of your pads, things like helmets, your skates. Skates a lot of times do have screws and stuff to do it, and make sure that all of it is tight. Make sure all of it uh doesn't need to replace that those screws and stuff haven't uh you know worn out over time and and and become loose and work their way out of stuff or rusted

Make sure your equipment still fits

SPEAKER_00
4:21

over. Check that all of your pads actually still fit, you know. Maybe put all your stuff on, and that's fine, you know, it's kind of fun to do it. Maybe put all put all of your gear on uh at least once to make sure everything still fits okay. Maybe put on a few pounds and need to get a little bit bigger pair of pants. Maybe you've lost a few pounds, they need to get a smaller set of shoulder pads. I don't know, but try it out. Not a bad thing to do. Put your gear on. Takes a couple minutes, make sure everything still fits, make sure there's not any weird gapping on stuff that you didn't notice before. Definitely something to do. It's easy. It's an easy way to check all your stuff. Uh, make sure you clean your helmet, clean if you have a visor or cage, clean that really nicely. If you have a visor, make sure that you are, you know, clean that stuff up. Uh, if it's got a bunch of anti-fog stuff on it, no matter what you put on it, I recommend putting a little bit of dish soap and cleaning it off like that to get everything off of it, starting from scratch, so that way then you can put whatever you put on to keep up from fogging uh with it. Make sure there aren't huge scratches on it so you can still see out of it. Okay, make sure nothing on your cage has been bent from anything. Did you take a puck off the face and forget about it because you didn't get hurt? Check that out. Uh goalies, same thing for you. I know we don't usually include goalies and all this thing, all the stuff is still applicable to all goalies for all your uh gear and stuff. You know, check it all out, inspect it and everything, put everything on, same thing. Especially for you guys, check out your helmets, make sure your helmets don't have any, you know, anything cracked or broken in them because you don't want to take a puck in the face. Nobody wants to take a puck in the face. Uh, make sure that your the little clips that you have, if you have a player helmet, you know, little J clips that are on the side there that hold your cage, your face mask on, make sure those are intact and the right height. Now's the time to kind of mess around with it and adjust it, you know, when you're not in a hurry before a game. So make sure that's all good. Uh I think a really big thing to do that people don't normally do, I'm very, very guilty of this, is clean out your entire hockey bag, take everything out of it, and clean your bag. You know, give it a little bit of wipe down, vacuum it

Clean out your hockey bag

SPEAKER_00
6:15

out. I don't know, crap winds up in my hockey bag throughout the course of a year. I don't know how it gets in there. I don't know how stuff gets dirty in there, but it does go through there, make sure that, you know, it's like I said, wipe it out, clean it up, vacuum it out. A lot of people you wind up in there, you know, broken pieces of laces, uh, empty beer cans, maybe you have uh scraps of tape in there, uh tape that's gotten soaked and and needs to get tossed. Uh, maybe you've forgotten actual clothes in there, or old socks and things like that that you just didn't take out and put in the laundry. Now's the time to do it. You know, you're inspecting all your gear, take everything out of the bag, everything out of the bag open, all the zippers and everything. If you have a modern bag that's got a million and a half zippers, clean it out. Just clean it up. Not gonna take that long. This is this is a good Saturday rainy day project to do, you know, it's a good thing to

Inspect your sticks

SPEAKER_00
7:04

do. Moving on to everybody's favorite piece of equipment, your sticks. You know, this is the time to take off the old tape on your sticks, whether it's the old tape knob or tape on the blade, take that stuff off, clean the blade off properly, clean clean the the grip off properly, whatever you have on there, you know, clean that stuff off. If you have to get some goo gone or something, or some simple green or anything like that, and get the tape residue off, get it off nice and clean, tape it up really nicely. While you're taping it up, inspect it, make sure it doesn't have chips and cracks and things like that. Just because it has something like that doesn't necessarily mean you can't use it, depending on the severity of it, but be aware of it. A lot of this is just being aware of stuff with your with your hockey gear so that as you play throughout the year, you know if you hear something or feel something that's what happened, what it could possibly be. If you don't ever really look at you know the shaft of your hockey stick and there is a giant gouge in it or a big crack in it, you can probably still play with it. But then, you know, you're gonna be not shocked if halfway through the season you go wind up for a giant slap shot and the thing just snaps in half. You're gonna know, oh, I should have a second stick with me. I need to have a backup because this isn't uh the long for this world with a crack like that, you know. So it's more about being aware of all the gear that you have. Doesn't mean you have to repair everything, doesn't mean you have to go out and buy new stuff right away. You can if you want, buying new gear is always fun, but it's being aware of what your gear is, the shape that it is in before the season starts, so you you know what might fail you, and be prepared for if it does fail

Build a hockey emergency repair kit

SPEAKER_00
8:41

you. I also highly recommend building a little hockey emergency kit and keeping that in your hockey bag. This would have things like spare laces, helmet screws, screwdrivers so you can put in the helmet screws, you know, tape, whatever kind of tape you use. If you use clear for your shin guards, have some of that. You know, if you have white tape for your stick, black tape, whatever, but having some of your tape, having scissors of some sort, uh, because that's helpful if you're gonna tape up your stick very nice and neatly. Again, you can just tear it, but nice to have the scissors, you know, have a little baby pair of scissors in there. Uh, having any kind of helmet repair repair stuff that you might need, like extra chin straps or anything. If you notice that stuff is about to break, you know, anything like that that you notice having that stuff on you. Throw that stuff into a like little any kind of little bag. I use a little dop kit bag. You can get those from like howys if you want a hockey one or Pacific Rink, throwing that in your bag. I have a whole reference to all the stuff that I carry with me in every game in another episode. I will link to that. Uh, so if you're curious, you can find out some of those things. You know, while you're doing all this stuff and you're getting your stuff all organized, organize your hock tape. See how much you have, what you need, if you're almost out of something. You know, do you have a bunch of half rolls because you keep taking, keep getting full rolls, taking them with you, using them for a couple games, and they come out of your bag and they never go back in? Do you have a bunch of rolls of tape that are almost dead, that have like nothing left on them? Do you have tons of brand new rolls they've never put in your bag? Check this stuff out. See if you need to get new tape. You know, you don't have no one likes the person that never has tape on them because they always keep forgetting to buy it. So do it now. Check your tape inventory. You know how much tape you go through in a season, probably. Try and have like that much. You know, make one trip to the hockey store, get get what you need. This is this is again all about kind of knowing the status of your entire hockey equipment ecosystem, knowing all the stuff that is there and where everything stands and what you need. And you can make a trip to the hockey store or go online and buy the stuff and have it before the season starts. That's why important to do this, not the night before your first game or two days before your first game, well before your first game. So you're aware of all this stuff and what you may or may not need. And with that, you can make a replacement list of stuff that you need to have as well. So not just buying your hockey tape. But you know, if you have anything that's busted that you need to get new ones of, it's a lot easier to have a little bit of time to find like a new helmet versus just going, oh crap, I gotta have a helmet uh in two days because I noticed that mine's cracked. Or, you know, I can't use my elbow pad anymore because the Velcro is totally shot on it and I can't repair it. So I need to get new elbow pads. Uh, I just have to get whatever they have at the local store right away because you know, I have a game soon. So making sure you know all this stuff for it. Hopefully you're getting the idea of all this, of just kind of understanding the the status of where your equipment is and where you want it to be. All right, outside of your equipment, what can you do before your hockey season starts? There's tons of stuff you can do to try and improve your game.

Getting your hockey skills ready

SPEAKER_00
12:12

Um, I am by no means a coach or anything that should be giving you tons of advice for things you can do, but I know stuff that you can do that are that are pretty simple things to do. Uh do some stick handling at home. It's not that hard to get, you know, either an actual stick handling ball or one of those little uh wooden stick handling balls or a tennis ball or a golf ball or uh a puck that can be used on not ice, like a green biscuit, any of those, depending on what your situation is for things. Not not hard to uh just go stick handle for a couple minutes a day. You know, if you if you work at home, get up and uh stick handle when you can. If it really should not be hard to find honestly, five or ten minutes a day to do a little bit of stick handling. Um if you

Get in some easy skills practice

SPEAKER_00
13:01

want to be really fancy about it, do it while you're watching TV. And just watch the TV while you do it. Try and watch the TV as much as possible while you're doing little stick handling drills. And you can make them as advanced or as easy as is applicable to you, you know. And depending on where you do this, you know, you can even do some kind of stick handling on a carpet. You don't need uh fancy uh, you know, tiles to put down to do on stuff like that. That's great if you have them. It's great if you can do it. But I mean really a golf ball on a carpet, not the greatest thing, but it's probably better than nothing uh for stick handling. And like I said, do it while you're watching TV. You can you can do it in in 10, 5, 10 minutes a day makes will make a definite difference for you. So something easy to do. Uh, same kind of thing is practice shooting. Practicing shooting. Uh, if you have a net to use, if you don't have a net, but you can set up some kind of a uh net sized area somewhere that you can shoot at. You know, if you have cinder block walls in your basement, you can shoot at those. Put some uh tape up and shoot at that. Uh if you have a brick wall outside that you can shoot at, uh, you can shoot at that as well. Make sure you have a uh proper thing for shooting with. Um if you know, depending on what you're shooting at and what you're shooting off of, uh, so it's something for it. But that's something that you again you can do with just a couple minutes a day, practice on some stuff. Uh the biggest thing I would say with that is if you don't have a net or you don't have some sort of surround, especially around the net, uh that can catch whatever you're shooting, be careful. Because whatever you're shooting, you don't want to start breaking windows and breaking car windows and stuff like that out with it. But again, there's tons of ways to do this. There's tons of videos out there for different ways people do this kind of stuff. You can find things if you if you do a few minutes of research uh out there. Same kind of thing. If you're doing some stick handling, you're doing some shooting, you can pretty easily practice some passing by passing off of things. You know, so if you have a wall that you're uh you're shooting against, you know, you can pass off the wall to yourself, uh, depending on what you have. Again, this is where things like tennis balls and golf balls uh act differently than pucks, but they do bounce off things. So you could totally use things like that to practice passing and receiving a little bit uh off of a wall. Uh because they do act differently than pucks, they are tend to be trickier to handle than pucks, which can be a helpful thing. So not the same as playing hockey, not the same as being out on the ice doing things, but it's something you can definitely be doing to kind of get back into hockey and try and work on some of your super basic skill set. While you're doing all that stuff, uh a couple things that I will call out that will make it more effective for you. Uh, like I said, if you're doing any kind of stick handling, uh try not watching stick handling. Try watching, you know, watching television is an easy way to do that. So try and concentrate on what's on TV and doing that like using a peripheral. Uh, if you don't want to do it while you watch TV or outside or something, try looking at something else that is not down, trying to focus on something else that you are doing uh for things. Uh that definitely helps out. There's all kinds like if you want to get super advanced, there's things out there that like you can put on your phone that do colors and numbers and stuff that you have to call out while you're stick handling, so you have to be paying attention. Super great, super helpful. Probably a little bit more advanced uh than stuff we normally talk about on here. Uh practice your passing. Uh, a really good thing, like I said, is practice uh catching bad passes. This is beer league. People are mostly awful passers. Uh, so practice, you know, settling pucks down when you get them. Or again, this is where like a golf ball is great, it's super bouncy. Practice settling stuff down, practice kind of catching them outside of where you want to, too close, too far, uh, how to pull it back into yourself, things like that. Uh super great to do that. And one thing I will say if you are going to practice on your shooting, a thing that I think

Why beer leaguers should practice their backhand

SPEAKER_00
16:46

is severely overlooked, uh, just in general in beer league, practice your backhand. A lot of people don't shoot their backhand, don't practice the backhand. Practice using your backhand. Practice using your backhand for passing, for receiving pucks, for shooting, even when you're stick handling and things like that. Just get more comfortable with your backhand. Uh, it is something that is very underutilized in beer league, I would say. Another thing you can do to try and get a little bit better while you're getting ready for your beer league season is learning uh some some super simple positioning concepts.

Learn some simple concepts

SPEAKER_00
17:19

Uh so not trying to learn hockey strategy as a whole, but pick kind of like one thing to really try and learn what that is. So, some examples of what I'm talking about for that are uh being at how how you should be in the defensive zone as a winger, uh supporting on a breakout offensively and defensively, uh covering the slot. What does that mean? Offensive zone support, especially for defensemen. If you usually play defense, how how you're supposed to support in the offensive zone, and back checking, the thing that never happened in the beer league, but can make such a difference. Just trying to look up stuff like this online, find videos of people explaining things, see diagrams, game examples, stuff like that. Trying to just learn like one concept uh and practice it throughout the year can really be helpful and really a great way to get better at hockey without trying to just be like, I'm just trying to be better at hockey at everything, because that's really hard to do. Another thing you can do with that is this something you can do throughout the season, something you can do if you're watching any kind of like summer hockey that's out there, like uh the beauty league or three ice or any of these things that are out there that you can watch for free on YouTube. Um watch an entire shift for a player, not with the puck. See kind of where they go, see how they move, see what kind of things they do once they you know, if they have the puck, once they give it up, what do they do? How do they get themselves open for the puck? How do they support the players that have the puck? Uh, how do they defend players away from the puck? Things like that. Uh, it's really easy to watch a lot of the stuff streaming now. Like I said, that a lot of these uh places have it streaming for free on YouTube, and that's a fun thing to watch and a fun thing to try and pick out while you're watching it, uh, that can help give you some ideas for things that you can do. Along those same lines, if you're kind of a masochist, uh, another thing you can do, I've talked about this in other episodes, you can review game footage if you have it available to you. Uh, if anybody has pulled it down from like Live Barn or something like that, or have it anywhere for you to check out, you can pull down your game footage and look for all the different things you do. Uh, check out and see if there's any repeated issues on yourself you can find. Uh, if there's anything that you can do to make yourself a little bit better, or things that you notice that people keep beating you with, and how do you prevent that? It's something to do, you know. Something pretty pretty easy thing to do to watch. It can be painful, but it's a good thing to do. Here's one that this one's gonna sound weird, but trust me, this this this one can be a big difference is practice on ice communication while you're watching hockey. So you don't have a saying is kind of picking a player that's maybe away from the puck and watching them and concentrating what they're doing. And I wouldn't necessarily do this while you're watching with other people, but especially if you're watching by yourself, call out stuff that they should be calling out while they're playing. So things like saying, you know, man on, uh, up the boards, wheel, you know, get in the middle, anything like that for offensively and defensively, you can kind of play along, calling out stuff that they should call out. And hopefully that will help burn that into your brain of things that you should be calling out yourself while you're playing. Because that is a big thing that I noticed with beer leaguers. I think people are aware of this. I think this is a known thing, especially lower-level beer leaguers. They don't talk, they don't call stuff out. It makes such a difference if you do. So, that is a way that you can try and get a little bit better at it and get a little bit more used to it. You can look like a raving lunatic while you're doing this because you're basically yelling at the TV. Yeah, but hey, it it can help. So if you're watching these games by yourself, there you go. That's a fun bonus tip. Some other more rapid fire, these weren't super rapid fire, were they? Okay, close things out. Uh, things you can

Rapid-fire Checklist

SPEAKER_00
21:15

do that will help out. Make a things I always forget hockey checklist. So if you don't have your gear arranged nicely somewhere that you grab it every game, make some kind of a way to check off that you have all your stuff so you are not forgetting your left glove anymore at games. Wash or replace your hockey water bottle. If it's a water bottle that's only for hockey, if you don't use it for anything else, make sure it's not disgusting. Usually those things get gross. So either deep clean it out. There's a bunch of different ways to do that, or replace it. Sometimes it's just worth it to toss it and go buy a new one. But but definitely go, but definitely check that out. Make sure you check on your jersey situation. If you are a player that plays on regular teams, make sure all your jerseys are in good shape when you have everything that you have, the jerseys that you need to have for the team. If you're someone that subs a bunch for another team, make sure you have appropriate jerseys for the teams you're subbing for, appropriate colors for. If you're just someone that plays like pickups and things like that, make sure you have appropriate jerseys for that, not gray, you know, a white jersey and a black jersey, uh, for those things and that they are still usable to you. They haven't gotten too beat up or ripped or torn that you can't wear them and stuff. Make sure you have those, make sure you know what the status is of those. Again, check jerseys and socks, make sure your socks are still intact, they haven't gotten too uh torn up or anything like that, that the velcro still works on them, everything. Repack your hockey bag, but take time to make sure you can pack everything in kind of the best way for you, whether that is the most compact way for you, because you have a small bag, whether that is in an easy order to get things out of. So, you know, when you're sitting down in locker room and get stuff out easy, whatever it is, but take time now to figure out how you want to pack that. And if you have a certain order that you pack your hockey bag in, that makes it a lot harder to forget your stuff. There you go. Get rid of all that, get rid of all the spare hockey hardware things, like we talked about the helmets and all that kind of stuff and your tape and all those things from floating around in your bag. Either put them in designated pockets in your bag if you have zippered pockets everywhere, or get a little kit to put them in. I recommend those little, like I said, dop kits. A lot of the hockey uh bag places will sell a little hockey specific kit that has zipper pouch like that, or you can go to kind of any big box store and uh go look right now. It's back to school time and go look for back to school uh stuff and find little pencil cases and things like that and that can store your stuff uh an appropriate size if you want to do that, but just don't have floating around in your bag. And finally, the best way to go through all those things, try and find out when your first game is going to be, and then work backwards from that so you know how much time you have for this stuff. So if you do have to buy new gear, if you have to get new jerseys, anything like that, you are not under a massive time crunch. So you don't get stuck with really crappy uh shoulder pads because you forgot to go buy some because you didn't realize your game started in uh three weeks and you couldn't get shipping in time for it. But so try and find about when you think that's gonna start and work backwards from there with what you have. There you go. Uh about as rapid fire as I can do list of stuff to get you ready for the off season to go. There you go, about as rapid fire of a list as I'm ever gonna do for things to get you ready to go from the off season to in season for your upcoming beer league season. If I forgot anything, as always, you can drop me a note down in the comments or send me a message over at thebeerleaguer.com,

Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_00
24:48

which is also where you can go check out any past episodes that you may have missed. Thanks for listening, and I'll catch you in the next one.