The Beer Leaguer
The podcast for the discerning beer league hockey player. We cover all things adult recreational hockey from folks that never played professionally, but just want to have fun and get a little better every game.
The Beer Leaguer
End of Season Gear Checklist
In this episode of The Beer Leaguer podcast we start our off-season series by talking about going over your gear and making sure you're ready for next season. There is a checklist of everything to go over to make sure you know where all of your equipment stands, what to look for, and how to fix some of it yourself.
Links:
Gear Checklist (Google Doc)
Wash Your Gear Video (https://youtu.be/R3nvcGnRh3M)
Fix your Pants Video
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Music by RomaRecord1973 via Pixabay
In this episode of The Beer Leaguer Podcast, we start off our off season series by talking about what to do with your beer to make sure you're ready to go when next season starts. We go over an easy to follow checklist to make sure you know the condition of your equipment, what kind of things to be on the lookout for, what you do and don't need to worry about, and even how to fix some of it yourself. It's getting to be that time of the year, when a lot of the rinks are melting their ice, gates are being traded into rollerblades. This is usually the biggest stretch of time when there isn't regular beer league hockey happening. So how do you take advantage of this? For me, it's the perfect time to check on all my gear, make sure everything is doing its job like it's supposed to. That means, for some of you, this is the first time ever possibly, you're gonna have to take your gear out of your bag. All of it. Now, I have a huge checklist of everything I'm gonna talk about. That checklist is available online as a Google Doc. Link to that is in my show notes, or as links for everything, always for all the episodes at thefearleaguer.com. So, what I'm gonna do is basically go through this kind of checklist of all the stuff that I think of and all the gear, what I check, and everything like that. Go a little bit more in depth into what I'm looking for, why I'm looking for, if there's anything you can do about it, or if it just means you need to get new stuff, or you're going to have to deal with broken gear. And kind of explain that as I go. And finally, if you're wondering, why would I do this? Why do I want to go through my gear like this? This sounds kind of boring because I'm not a gear head. Listen, hockey is expensive. Beer League hockey is stupid expensive. We play to do this stuff and pay a stupid amount of money for the gear that we have, that we try and have last for as long as we possibly can, because most of us don't have tons of money to throw around for new gloves every year or new shin pads all the time. So just taking 20 minutes once a year can make some of this stuff last a lot longer and make sure that you're not one of these people that gets to a game and realizes, oops, my hand just went through my glove because the palm completely came out. Well, I guess I should have noticed that. And yes, I've seen that happen. I've seen people do this, especially when they come back into the fall because they haven't been playing like all summer. I've seen people come in, and that's the first time they've looked at their gear since the last game at the end of last season. And so it's been sitting in the bag, maybe in the garage or in the basement, or, oh, God forbid, in the back of their truck or something like that for four or five months, and their gear is destroyed. So this is a quick, simple step to take to prevent that from happening, all right? So that's all this is. And trust me, it pays for itself if you save one piece of gear. It makes it worth it. All right, so let's start this off. First thing you should do, wash your gear, wash your bag. Yeah, I said it, wash your stuff. I don't get the whole not washing your gear thing. I'll put a link, I have a YouTube video about how I wash my gear. It's real simple, I throw everything into the tub with some OxyClean, some Simple Green, let it soak, you know, rinse it out a few times, put it out in the sun on a nice hot sunny day. It's great, throw it in your driveway if you have room, have it sit out in the sun for a while. Your gear is, you know, super clean. It didn't take that long. I've also used a pressure washer. I've put it not into my bathtub but into like a giant plastic tub, like one of those storage totes. You know, I know people that throw it into their pools for a while, especially now when they're kind of opening up their pools to begin the summer and let the chlorine do its thing, but just something to wash your gear. You know, it's, now's a good time. If you watch stuff, like as we're in NHL playoff time now, you pay attention to the injuries and stuff they talk about. I have noticed, and I don't know if I'm really just hyper aware of it now, or if it's more and more happening, of them talking about staff infections for players and players getting staff infections and stuff like that. And it's usually, you know, somebody got cut during a game, didn't realize they were cut, you know, and whatever. But I just noticed it a lot more in just NHL or AHL or just any hockey playoffs or at the end of the season here, a lot more lately. And I know a number of people in beer league that have got staff infections. And it's primarily because they don't ever wash their gear. So if you do get a cut or something, which you get cuts and stuff all the time, it doesn't mean somebody skate, you know, sliced your leg open or something. I mean, it happens. You know, you get cuts on things, and then they get staff infection because their gear is disgusting. So there's my little PSA about washing your gear. All right, now, into checking your gear. I'm going to just kind of run through what I look at, stuff of how I try and fix it if I can, and, you know, to me, red flags to replace stuff. So I'm going to start with probably the gear that you pay the least amount of attention to, your bag. I think a lot of people don't check their hockey bags until it's way too late. So if you have all your gear out, you're washing it, you know, give your bag a wash if you can, or at least vacuum it out. I know I always have crap in the bottom of my bag, accumulates. You know, I don't know what it is that gets in there. But then I also have a whole bunch of stuff that I just forget about. I always have extra pucks. I a lot of times find extra socks and stuff like that in my bag. So it's a good thing to go and open up all the pockets and take everything out and just clean it out. Also check for any holes or rips, depending on what kind of bag you have, if you have like an old canvas bag, checking that nothing's poked it and made a big rip in it or anything like that. Or if you have some of the newer bags that are made out of a tarp material, checking that, because I have noticed that those types of bags are real prone to, if you have a small hole in it, they're real prone to tearing easily. So that's a good thing to check. And I'm not saying you got to stitch it up. I mean, you can. That's great. You can also tape the stuff up. A lot of these bags, you can tape up with some good duct tape or gorilla tape or something like that, and prevent it from splitting even more. But being aware that it's there. Also, check the zippers. This is a good time to make sure your zippers work. If the zipper broke at some point, see if you can just reattach the little, I don't know what you call it, the little thing that goes up and down the zipper teeth. That little guy, make sure that if you can reattach it, reattach it. If not, maybe you have to replace the zipper. They're pretty easy to sew on if you can sew or you have access to a sewing machine. If not, you can go to a dry cleaner or a tailor or somebody. If you're lucky enough to have a cobbler or a fancy luggage shop near you, they can put zippers on things and repair stuff like that, and it's usually extremely cheap. But it's good to just check that and make sure and see that all that is working good. And try the zippers. Make sure there's not broken teeth and stuff like that. And again, not saying you have to replace it if they're broken. But hey, if you have a zipper that has broken teeth, no, maybe you don't zip that pocket up or don't zip it up all the way, something like that. Again, you can put tape or something to stop you from zipping it, to remind you to do that. Also, check all the straps, all the handles, whatever you have on your bag for that. And make sure that they're not coming loose, or if they are loose, be aware of it, you know, because you don't want to be dropping your bag and stuff like that. That sucks, especially if you drop your bag on your foot. You know, but just be aware that things like that might need to get replaced, or those straps aren't getting cut in them. A lot of bags now have those seatbelt straps, and they're super, super sturdy unless they get cut. They're hard to cut, but if they do get cut, a lot of times, it's, they just shear off pretty easily if they have been cut. So it's something to be aware of, and know when you're looking at your bag, but hey, maybe you need to look at replacing that, or it's something to put on your radar for it. I know I've go through a number of bags. I've had a number of bags. I've had a Pacific Rink bag, which are like tanks, but I had that. I had the straps, all the side handles all came off. I had some of the straps, I don't know, got cut. I think somebody might have stepped on it in the locker room or something like that, and it started to split, and it just sheared itself off. So, you know, but that happens. So it's something good to be aware of and know what's going on with those. And you can always replace the straps. I mean, if it's just like a shoulder strap, you can get those from like a backpack or a shoulder bag or something like that, and you can buy them online pretty easily to replace that. So if it's just that, not terrible to replace it, you know? If your bag has wheels, check the wheels. Make sure that they're in there tight. If there's anything you got to screw down on them or anything like that, make sure they don't have any huge gouges. I mean, usually the wheels on these bags are like roller blade wheels, so they wear down over time. So just check them if you can replace them, replace them if you need to, but just kind of more so be aware of what kind of condition they're in. And if you have one of those extendable plastic handles like you have on suitcases, check that, see if there's anything cracked or busted on it, and if you can, try and replace it. Or if you can't, see if you can, like I say with most things, especially with stuff like your bag, see if you can tape it up and make it work. If you have a wheel bag and the handle that you wheel it around with is plastic and it's gotten all beat up, and maybe it's fallen off or something like that, see if there is a way you can reattach it. Now is the time to do that, versus waiting for game one in a couple of months where you go pull it out the back of your car, put it on the ground, and go to walk in the rink with it, and the bag just falls to the ground because the handle came off. Now is the time to look at that. Maybe you have to switch to not using the wheels, and it has backpack straps that you can use instead. Now is the time to find that stuff out, though. Next thing on the list, look at your helmet. Helmet's super important. In my opinion, the most important piece of gear that you have and the thing that I would spend the most money on or the least care about how much money you spend on it because if you fall on your head and you're playing beer league, you're going to fall. You want to make sure you don't hurt your brains. So helmets, stuff to look for with that. Just check the outside. Make sure nothing's cracked. I mean, they're plastic outsides. Make sure it's not in terrible, terrible shape with that. Check all the fabric-y stuff, like your chin straps and the cup. Those are real easy to replace and easy to buy new ones if you need to get a new chin cup because those are usually weird foam that just seems to disintegrate over time. Check inside the helmet. Check your foam or whatever you have in there. See if any of it needs to be glued down or if it needs to completely get replaced. I mean, helmets do have a lifespan on them. They don't last forever. If you are going to glue it down, though, be real careful and make sure you get glue that works for that type of foam. A lot of super glues and stuff like that will just eat away helmet foam, so don't use those. So if you're going to glue that stuff down, make sure you do a quick search, find out what is an appropriate glue to use for that. While you're doing that, clean off the outside of your helmet with a rag. I'm not saying you have to put that in the wash or anything, but give it a nice little clean, so that way you can tell if there's problems with it. And make note of the H-E-C-C date on it if you can read it. That's the date that your helmet technically expires, and see what it is. I'm not saying you have to replace your helmet whenever that, when it's gotten past that date. You're supposed to. But, you know, if you can't read it, and it's, the date is 19-something, probably a good argument to go get a new helmet. But just make a note of it. You know, so you're aware if your helmet's insanely out of date or not. Also, while we're up there protecting your face, if you have a visor, you have a cage, check that. You know, make sure if there's any cracks. If you have a visor and you have cracks and stuff in it, I think that's, you got to get a new one. I don't know how you could live with a crack in the visor. Same thing, if you have a cage, or even half a cage, and any of the little pieces are separated, probably time to get a new one of those. But just check it. Make sure that it's in good shape. Make sure everything is okay there. It's also a good time if you have a visor. Give it a real good cleaning. If you've been using anti-fog spray on it. As someone that uses anti-fog on my goggles all the time, I do a couple times a year just wash them. I usually wash them with some dish soap. Some Dawn or something like that is very good. So if you have a visor and you've been using anti-fog spray on it instead of just having that cake up on there, that was probably a good time to give it a cleaning. If it's brand new, probably don't need to, but if you had it for years, not a bad idea to do something like that. Also with your helmet and your cage visor, whatever you got, check the screws. Check the screws on everything. Helmets have a lot of screws holding in pieces. Even if you don't have a cage or a visor on there, they have screws kind of holding pieces together usually. Check those, make sure they're tight. Tighten everything down. Replace any of them that have come out, that have gotten lost over time, especially if you have a cage or a visor on there. Check the screws that hold it in. Check the screws that hold in the little J clips that keep it in place. You know, buying a helmet repair kit, I guess they're usually called, is they're very cheap online. They have the exact size screws and the little button hole screws that, you know, your chin strap pops into and stuff like that. But go through, this is a good time to check. Make sure all that stuff is tightened down. Make sure you can tighten it down, nothing stripped, anything like that. One little tip I will say, if you don't know about tightening your helmet screws, usually you need to hold the back of them with another screwdriver. A lot of times that's how they're set up, is you kind of move the foam or whatever padding you have out of the way on the back of the screw, hold that with a screwdriver, and then tighten it from the other side too. It's usually how most of those work. So go through, get that all checked, then your helmet's good to go, and you don't have to worry about it. Next up, kind of trying to go in order of head to toe with your gear with stuff, at least in my head, this is how this stuff works, is if you wear any kind of undergarments, if you're someone that just wears like a regular t-shirt, you know, whatever, it's a t-shirt, if you have any kind of hockey-specific under stuff that you wear, there's a real good time to check that. Also wash it, because apparently some people don't wash that stuff, which is, again, disgusting. But now is a real good time to check that, make sure if there's any holes or rips or tears or anything like that, that you, you know, fix those up. That's not something you can fix with tape, that's something you would have to sew up for that. But, you know, just check those. Check if there's loose strings hanging out, and, you know, snip, do the snippet and run a lighter over it to prevent it from coming out even more. So that way, as you take off, you know, your protective gear, you don't catch that string and all of a sudden, you know, the side of your shirt now is completely open because you pulled that string out. If you have those little plasticky, sticky pads that are glued on that are supposed to help you, you know, your elbows and your shin guards and stuff like that, check those. Those, in my experience, those tend to wear off over time, which is fine, but it can be real annoying if they're kind of like dangling on and flopping around. So now is a good time to, you know, either glue them back on with some fabric glue or you could try something like a super glue or something like that or just rip it off, you know, instead of having it just flopping around and dangling there. And coming out in the washing machine. And also, and this is going to be on a lot of the gear, check the Velcro. So check any kind of Velcro. So like for me, I have Velcro on pants that I wear that hold up my hockey socks. And then I do have one of the undershirts that I wear has a neck guard and its Velcro holds that together. So check the Velcro. And this applies to all the stuff that has Velcro. What you can do with this is with Velcro, you can either A, just un-stitch it and stitch on new Velcro. That's probably the best way to fix it. Also, if you don't want to do that, you can just buy Velcro that has adhesive backing and either put it on both ends of the Velcro, both sides that are a problem, or on the side that's, if only one side is a problem, you can usually just kind of stick it and have it stick to the other Velcro, if that makes sense. You put the adhesive backing over the old bad Velcro. Or if you can un-stitch it, a lot of times if you get a seam ripper, if you have one of those, or you can try it with scissors or a knife, but a seam ripper works so much better. You can do that and then get the Velcro that goes on and just sticks right there to replace it. If you don't want to replace your Velcro, there's a couple different ways you can try refreshing and bringing life back to Velcro. The first thing is if you have an old toothbrush, and preferably it is a hard toothbrush, you can actually use that to try and kind of fluff up the Velcro. I don't know, by the way, to say it than that. And that can help. That can fix a lot of Velcro if it's just kind of been kind of used too many times, compressed too much. And so an old toothbrush. This is actually one of the things when I go to the dentist and they give you toothbrushes. I don't use them to brush my teeth because I have an electric toothbrush, but this is one of the things I use those toothbrushes for, is for fluffing Velcro. So you can do that. You can also try applying a little bit of heat with like a hair dryer on low and see if that helps. But that's kind of a last resort because too much heat is just going to melt. Because Velcro, if you didn't know, the way it works is it's very thin, like plastic loops on one end, and then the other end is the same thing, but the loops are all cut kind of at the top, and that's how they all stick together. So it's real easy to melt Velcro and make it not work at all. But sometimes if you just apply a little bit of heat, and this is one of those things where, again, hair dryer better than a heat gun or something like that, low heat, move it around a whole bunch, you can kind of make it pop up and spring back to life a little bit more. But toothbrush, way better way to do it. And this, again, applies to all Velcro on all your gear. So do that. That's a handy, handy thing to know how to do. Next up, we got shoulder pads. Same thing, check the Velcro stuff. And again, this is going to be on a lot of these things. Check the foam or plastic, whatever is in there, for any kind of splits, or if it's broken or anything like that, and see where it is, if anything needs to be replaced, if anything's come out, if there is fabric pieces on there, see if there's any rips or tears on that, and make sure that sometimes doesn't affect anything. Sometimes it means if there's a rip or a tear on some of this stuff, some of the foam has come out. If you still have that foam, if it hasn't all the way come out, try and repair that up, that tear, try and patch it back up. Again, tape is a great thing. This is a great use of duct tape, Gorilla tape, something like that, to do that. And check for the stitched plastic pieces. So a lot of protective gear has plastic stitched to foam or fabric or something like that. Check that stitching. You can always get a stitching tool and replace it if you need to, but this is also a good place where you could try and glue stuff together if stuff has come loose so that things don't come out, so that everything stays together like that. I have a video out about using a speedy stitch, it's called, to fix my shoulder pads, and that's a way you can fix something like that when stitching just completely comes undone, but it's a good time to check all those things. You know, kind of give everything a good tug and make sure everything's still tight in the way it is, you know, so it doesn't come off while you're playing. Not the end of the world on some of this stuff. If you do wear shoulder pads, I don't know if everybody does, if you do, and the shoulder caps come off, some people don't care, some people prefer them to come off. If you do care, you know, watch for it. Also, with all the gear, kind of the rest of the protective gear, we're going to talk about elastic. What do you do when the elastic gets stretched out and doesn't work anymore? A couple of these things you can do, you can try replacing the elastic is the best thing, but that involves undoing stitching and stitching stuff back up, which people usually don't want to do. Again, that's something you can try taking to, like, someone that does dry cleaning or a cobbler or a luggage place, or if you want to buy a cobbler's sewing machine, like I have, and do that yourself. Most people don't want to do that, though, because a lot of those times you are going through multiple layers of foam and fabric and a lot of times plastic, so a regular sewing machine is not going to cut it. So if you don't want to do that, the other option that you have is you can cut it really short and stitch on new elastic on there or just cut kind of the middle out and stitch new elastic on both ends in there if you don't want to put on new Velcro to the elastic as well. That's not too hard. That's something you can do by hand. That's something you can do with a sewing machine super easily. Most people can do that. But definitely sew it. Don't just try and glue that or tape that even with fabric glue, especially not an elastic. It's not going to last very long. But that's the easy way around it. Or what a lot of people will do is, because usually the elastic hasn't lost all of its elasticity, it's just kind of become stretched out, is you can just kind of take a chunk of it in the middle and fold it onto itself, making the elastic shorter again, but make sure it still will fit and stay tight to you. And you can usually do a couple of stitches in there or a couple of safety pins even and just kind of hold that together like that. So there's a little bunch of elastic to make it seem more like it's the proper elastic and hasn't been all stretched out. So that again applies to all these things that have the elastic straps on them, which is most of the gear. All right, so there are shoulder pads, elbow pads, same kind of stuff. You're checking your Velcro, checking your foam, you're checking your elastics, checking your fabrics, covering everything. Make sure that that's all good on there. Shin guards, same sort of thing. The only difference with shin guards, I think, is a lot of times there is Velcro that hold. A lot of shin guards now have like two pieces. They have the kind of plastic piece that has some foam and then a foam insert into that. And that's kind of what goes against your leg. Usually there's Velcro that holds that in. So that's something else to check there, make sure that that is good. And, you know, that's holding everything together like it's supposed to. I've also, from personal experience, noticed that I have shin guard, the knee cups tend to crack a lot more than anything else and break. I have gone through so many shin guards where the knee cup, just the plastic on it gets cracked. And a game or two later, I have no plastic covering my knee anymore. And inevitably, that's when I get hit in the knee. That's how it works. Pucks will always find any of your protective gear that's not working properly, or if something's broken, the puck will find it for sure. So that's something to check on shin guards specifically, but same stuff, Velcro, elastic, all those things. Make sure all that is in good shape. Pants. If you wear a girdle and a shell, I would never use those, but similar ideas to everything else. I'll check on this stuff. I wear regular hockey pants. Check the fabric for any kind of cuts. I don't know how, but my hockey pants always have cuts in them. I don't know how that happens. I don't have people kicking me in the thigh. I do keep guards and soakers on my skates always when they're in my bag, because it's not from that. I don't know, but they always have cuts. Usually it doesn't matter. Usually I don't care. Occasionally, I will use, again, some gorilla tape or some duct tape or something like that on the inside of those cuts just to kind of keep them closed. Same thing, zippers. You know, a lot of, most pants, I think, have those, the Gretzky zippers on the inside, on the inner thighs, so you can put them on after you put on your skates if you're a weirdo like that and like switch your gear on out of order. Check those if you care. I know a lot of guys that you can tell they're guys that have had their pants forever, and usually this is one of those signs of a wringer, guys where the zippers are completely toast and their pants just flop around. So, again, not a huge thing, but that leaves that area not really protected because your pants aren't really close and aren't really protecting your inner thighs. So, but it's a good thing to know. Also, check if you know your lace belt or webbing belt or every kind of belt you have on that. Make sure that that stuff is there, not broken, doing its job. A few suspenders. Check that your little suspender holders, I don't know what you call those, but make sure those are in there. They're good. I have a video out about, you know, fixing those and putting on new ones. It's super easy to do. It takes like two minutes to put new ones in of those. So, you know, check those. Make sure that they're good. If you have suspenders, again, check suspenders. Make sure that they're still going to hold up everything. They're elastic, you know. I haven't seen the elasticity wear out on suspenders like I have on other gear, but, you know, make sure that they're working and doing their thing. And again, like with all the other protective stuff, you know, check the foam, plastic, whatever is in there. Make sure that if anything's cracked, it's not cracked in a bad way, you know. It's not going to poke you, it's not going to bust through and fall out or anything like that. And make sure that all that is in good shape. Gloves. Biggest thing, I think, for gloves, check your palms. Palms or gloves can tell you a lot of stuff. It can tell you if you need to do anything with your tape job on your stick. If your palm's on your upper hand when you're stick handling, are just completely destroyed. But on the other hand, they're not too bad. It's probably from the stick on your tape, probably from the butt end that you have. So, you know, there's not much you can do to replace palms. You can try and get some little replacement pads, a couple of places to sell them. You can also look for Gore-Tex pads. They just kind of stick in to gloves. If you have holes kind of more in smaller areas, but it's not all gone. There are services out there that will completely repalm gloves if you want. I think it's fairly affordable. I think it's definitely cheaper than buying new gloves. So, yeah, that's something to look at. But if you are noticing that, you know, your upper hand is getting way more worn out and you want to do something about that, that's a good time to think about maybe not using hockey tape and switching to something like a butt end or a lizard skin or one of those multiple other products out there that are not tape for the butt end of your hockey stick. And I have noticed that does make a difference. It definitely does drastically cut down on the wear of your gloves. Also, with gloves, you want to look for... check the outside for rips. Most bottom gloves, I don't see this as much of a problem. I used to, on older gloves that I have, have like the fingers would get rips in them, and the foam would just come out, and I would lose the foam and stuff that's in there. Modern gloves don't seem to have nearly as much of a problem, but it's a good thing just to look at, be aware, go through, make sure the foam on any of this stuff isn't super compressed and is still kind of doing its job. Make sure that the cuff and everything is still attached well, still doing its thing, protecting you from slashes and stuff like that. You don't want to find out that your cuff is all screwed up when somebody two-hands you across the hands and your cuff falls off and you break your wrist. That's not the time to find out. All right, skates. A lot of stuff on skates to look at. There's a lot of things to be checking out. And again, this is one of those things, skates super expensive, so it's worth a little bit of prevention on these. Check your tongues, check your tendon guards, make sure that they are still attached properly, not super loose, not coming apart, not getting split, anything like that. I don't think there's much of anything you can do if they do get split yourself. You can probably get somebody to reattach them and stitch them up somehow, but that's more than anything, that's just a good thing to know. If your tendon guards are getting super kind of split open and starting to come off, might be a good thing, one, to start looking for new skates, but also, two, be a lot more careful when you put your skates on. Make sure you open them up all the way, unlace the top one or two eyelets, get them real wide open and get your foot in so you're not stepping on your tendon guard to crack it. That can help extend the life of your skates a lot with that. Check your laces. This is the time to replace those laces that broke in game two, and you just haven't felt like it because it's a pain in the butt. Now is a good time to replace those laces. While you're doing that, inspect the eyelets while you're going through them. See if any of them are coming loose or popping out or splitting through the skate, anything like that. If they are, you can get new eyelets put in most places that will do any kind of skate work, sharpening or anything like that, will put new eyelets in for you. Some of the better ones will put in reinforced eyelets. They will put in some extra leather or plastic or something like that to try and keep them there. But it's also a good thing to kind of see if eyelets are starting to come out and your skates aren't insanely old. Maybe you are tightening up something too much and it's stopping you from flexing something that you should be flexing. So that's a good thing to think about when you are looking at this stuff, is why is this stuff wearing out, especially if it's not that old. Check your footbeds, take them out. You should be taking them out after every time you skate. Check the footbeds, make sure they are okay. All right, shape some of them with plastic and stuff. You want to make sure that that's not cracked or broken in any way. Also check the inside of your skate. See how it looks, especially the footbed inside your skate. See how that looks. What you are looking there for specifically is rust. You don't want any rust there. If you do have rust starting to show up there, it probably means that, one, you are not taking your footbeds out and properly drying out your skates after you play. But also, two, there are supposed to be little weep holes under your skate. Those might be blocked up. So maybe you need to clean those out with a pushpin. Just clean them out a little bit. And get that moisture to come out. Also, if you are starting to see a little bit of rust, it's a good reminder to you to, hey, when you are done skating, take footbeds out, you are supposed to have your skates be runners up when you store them so that the moisture can get out. That's a thing that I've seen in a couple of places. But a good thing to know, because a little bit of rust is not a big deal, but if it starts to be a problem of rust, your rivets can come undone, and you have to get new rivets, and that can be a pain. And if it's super rusted out there, it might be trouble getting a rivet to hold in there well. So that's something to be looking at. Also check your rivets inside and out, looking for rust, looking to see if anything is loose. They can get loose over time. They have two different kinds of rivets that they usually use on your skates. They have just regular metal rivets, and they also have copper rivets, which are the more heavy-duty ones. And if you have certain rivets that are constantly coming loose while you skate, again, any place that kind of does sharpening and general hockey, stuff like that, should be able to replace your rivets. We'll put copper rivets in more than just one or two spots on your skates. They'll put them in multiple spots to kind of hold that in better. If you're really beating up your skates, putting a lot of pressure on them on the inside or the outside, whatever. So a good thing to look at when you're doing that. Check your holders. Check them for cracks. Check them for looseness. You don't want those to crack on you. If there is a little hairline fracture in it, there's not really a way to replace those generally just because they're just a piece of plastic. There's not much you can do if they crack. You kind of need to get new ones. Also make sure that whatever the attachment system for the steel for the runners is to that works. It's a good time to kind of pop the steel out. Make sure you can pop the steel out. Put the steel back in. Make sure that that all kind of works and everything. Find it out now if it doesn't. If any of that is cracked or broken or it's not going to hold your steel in very good anymore, better to find out now than when you're playing. Also, it's easier to get stuff fixed and replaced now because it's not like, hey, I need to get new holders and new steel put on my skates. I got a game tonight. Can you do it now? It's a lot easier to take it to a place and go, hey, can you do this? Yeah, I can come back in a week. So it's good to look at that stuff. While you're also looking at that, check the steel, check the runners, make sure that there is still life left in them, that they're not all the way worn down. Again, check for rusting. If there is rust on there, that means that you're not really taking care of your skates. Great. After you're done playing, you should be wiping the snow off, ideally with a towel or something, more than just your finger, but even just use your finger to wipe that off and put them into soakers that helps keep the moisture off of them or dry them off really nicely with an actual towel. We'll do the same thing. If you have them floating around in your bag, they're probably going to have moisture, especially if you don't take them out and all your gear is kind of wet. So good thing to look at because if those start to rust up, they're going to get to a point probably before their life is up that you're going to need to get new steel. So take 30 seconds after your game and keep that in good shape. Finally, with skates, one thing I have noticed is skates usually have multiple layers of things kind of sewn together and glued together and stuff. And check for layer separation. I've noticed that I have skates that have started to separate layers. Some of them in parts doesn't matter. Some of them in parts where it's not that I'm worried my skates are going to completely come apart, but it's right around the eyelets and things like that, and I'm more worried about it ripping through the eyelets and making that real weak. And that is something you can definitely glue together with some super glue and a clamp. So that's a good thing. Just kind of give it a once over and look at them. Like I said, the helmet is a good time to take a rag, something on it, some kind of cleaner, some kind of real easy cleaner, like an easy green or something like that, a simple green cleaner, and just wipe them down. Just wipe down your skates, and while you're doing that, give it a good look over and see any of these things. Finally, last thing, sticks. Pretty easy. Just look up and down your stick. Usually, you can use your hand if you're feeling dangerous about it. Look for any splits, splinters, cracks, anything like that. I say if you're crazy for that, because if you ever get a carbon fiber splinter into your finger, it sucks. It's awful. So just kind of check for that kind of stuff. Check the blade and especially the heel of the blade, if there's any cracks or splits or anything like that. Be aware of it. Use your own judgment if it's fine to play with or not. And this is a great time to put on a new knob, a new tape on your stick if you don't do that regularly. Like you're saying with the gloves, this is a good time to experiment with putting on something like a butt-ends or a lizard skin or one of these other ones and see how you like it. See what you think. Try putting it on now versus doing it right before a game in the locker room, and you're having trouble doing that. I think that kind of covers everything. It takes you head to toe all your gear, stuff to look for, stuff to be aware of, and hopefully gives you some idea of how to fix things or what you should specifically be looking for and care about. Hope that was helpful. Finally, an unrelated gear, or really anything outside of literally just The Beer Leaguer podcast here. There is a new way out to send ideas, stories, favorite cookie recipes, I don't care, to the show. You will start seeing in the show description a little link that lets you text the show. So you just click on that, brings up the texting app on your phone, and you can basically just text the show. I will say that there is a number that comes up that says do not erase this number. Don't erase that, because that's how it actually gets the message to this show and not just out to generic wasteland that no one will ever see. So just add your message in after that, and get some cool, like I said, ideas or stories or whatever you want to have sent to the show. So that's going to be showing up. It's in the show notes. It should be the show notes for all the shows, and from here on out should be there. So check that out if you'd like to get in touch with the show. Another way to get in touch with the show is at thebeerleaguer.com. That's where there's always all the show notes. If you don't want to go through the show descriptions and you want to get show notes for anything, any info for videos or anything else that is out there, thebeerleaguer.com. That is also where I will have a link to this checklist, and it's a literal checklist that is in a Google Doc to go through to kind of remind you of all the stuff that we talked about and went over today. All right, and that's it for this episode. As always, any likes, reviews, and subscriptions are appreciated and are the best way to help this podcast grow. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you in the next one. Bye.
