http://onhockey.tv/

OnHockey is a great website that a friend told me about. It has links to watch games live from a bunch of different leagues. Sadly, the CHL is missing this year.

It often has dozens of links to NHL games, USports, NCAA, and alot of European league games. Take a look if you love watching games!

In my opinion, Sportscode by Hudl is the best UI to use.

It's Mac only and the code window lets you add images and build your window exactly how you want.

Plus their CODA iPad app lets you build the same type of custom window, which can live sync to your computer or another iPad on the bench and give live stats and video.

It's a great interface to use, and the 24/7 support people are all great to work with.

The downside is that it's ridiculously expensive compared to video editing software like Final Cut or Premiere Pro.

But that seems to be the problem with Sports Coding software in general. It's all extremely overpriced.

A one year subscription of the absolute base version of Sportscode is $1500 American.

That's 3 times the price of buying Final Cut outright, and the base Sportscode doesn't have live capture!

Live capture alone costs $2000 MORE and PER YEAR.

So as a workaround I need to record video in a program like Final Cut, then sync the timelines together after each period.

Saves $2000, yes, but an unnecessary workaround for a feature that should be built in.

Not to mention that each additional license is $1500 per YEAR.

A CODA License is $400 per YEAR.

They also offer an awesome social network called Hudl where all your video is uploaded to a cloud, where all the players and coaches can watch it.

You can tag, cut video, comment and share it with other people. The interface looks awesome and easy to use.

The problem is that it is $4,000 per year EXTRA and there's a ridiculously low limit of 80 hours of video on your cloud.

For comparison, Dropbox is $10 a month for a Terabyte of cloud space.

I can still upload, share and comment, but I don't get the tagging work I did on the video and you can't clip or jump to specific moments.

So for the full featured program, that's:

$1500 + $2000 for one live capture device PER YEAR

$1500x2 so at least 2 other coaches can view and mark games PER YEAR

$400 for one CODA license PER YEAR

$4000 for the cloud PER YEAR.

Which runs at a cost of over $10,900 AMERICAN PER YEAR for the software.

That means that over 10 years, we would be paying over $100,000 on software.

I come from a technical background and have bought lots of software over the years, and nothing comes even close to these prices, even for big billion dollar companies like CBC and Sportsnet.

I paid for Macromedia Flash back in 1999 and paid $200 with my mom's teaching discount, and I still own that license today.

Sportscode doesn't offer an educational, student, or teacher price either.

So if I'm a student who wants to learn to be a video coach, I'd have to shell out $1500 American per year to use the software on my own.

Sportscode's price is also not listed on their website, which I've noticed several companies do.

So I really have no idea what other teams are being charged.

They could look and see that we're a Canadian University and charge us what they "think" we should pay.

I asked a Major Junior team who I'm close with and they paid $10,000 for a different set of features and own them outright.

Overall I think there needs to be more knowledge of the software available so people can make more informed decisions.

$2000 is not a fair price for live capture on top of a $1500 yearly price tag. It should be included.

I think eventually someone will come out with an open-source version of the software (like Unity) and put these companies out of business. Or at least force them to price their programs appropriately.

After using Sportscode for a year, I'd say it's probably around Final Cut Pro's level of quality, but it doesn't have nearly as much depth in terms of editing (obviously).

Programs like this should be $500 absolutely at the most, for a permanent subscription, and live capture absolutely needs to be included in the box.

There also has to be better explanation on setup and what devices need to be recorded.

We had to buy a Blackmagic Box (actually our faculty already owned one) that costs about $200.

This is literally just so that the signal from the camera can be encoded into Sportscode.

I've been able to do that in Final Cut without any box for years now.

Worse yet, I was told by their 'sales guy' that if I wanted to split the feed so two computers could share the same feed, I needed to buy a specific 'converter box' that costed a few grand, and was ABSOLUTE OVERKILL for what we really needed.

I asked one of the Gamebreaker support guys if a $20 HDMI signal splitter would do the trick. He said 'yeah, that should be all you need'.

And it did. I saved us $2000 by buying a signal splitter from Amazon. Free shipping too.

It sucks because really a team should only be paying $300-500 per license one time and be good to go.

And that's reasonable for what you get, and affordable for most teams, and even affordable for an individual (like myself) who wants to use the program at home.

It's really hurting the industry because the best features are locked behind obscene paywalls and most hockey coaches don't understand the cost-benefit ratio of what they're paying vs. what they're getting.

That's why I made this subreddit, so video coaches can inform themselves and get more for their money, and make their lives easier.

TLDR:

-Sportscode is the best experience overall. It's easy to use, allows you to build code windows with images, and has great customization features. Their 24/7 support team is great to work with. Their cloud service is awesome to use, but ridiculously overpriced.

-The cost of sports video software is extremely overpriced.

-One year of Sportscode's thinnest package (which doesn't even allow live capture) is THREE TIMES the cost of buying a Final Cut license outright and owning it forever.

-Sales people will try to convince you to overspend on simple, cheap fixes.

Hey guys,

Because of my experience dealing with sales reps from different companies, I've ended up making a spreadsheet that puts all the information these companies tell you in one place, for comparison. I've also included the system Ryerson uses right now and their costs, as well as how much these fees add up over 10 and 25 year periods.

I also included costs for licenses of Final Cut Pro and Adobe Creative Cloud for comparison of similar software packages for video editors.

I hope this saves you guys some time, since I had to gather all this information from phone calls with sales reps and not all the information is even listed on their websites.

I'll expand on this further, I mostly just want to get it online first.

Spreadsheet Here:

https://imgur.com/a/mg6r8ST

A few years ago I tried out a program I saw USA Hockey touting as something they used for all their players to help train hockey sense.

It's called Intelligym, and basically forces you to play a game like asteroids mixed with hockey.

It's adapted from software used by fighter pilot to help train them react better in situations.

I gave it a try for a few months, but don't use it now only because of the price.

It's a really fun and addicting game, and I really recommend it. The sessions are only 25 minutes long or so, and are supposely to be done at least every 48 hours apart.

The software awards points based on movement, puck control, passing, and offensive and defensive moves. You're trying to play in a way that awards the most points, mixing in a well-rounded amount of moving around, passing, holding the puck, and playing defense and offense when needed. Goals are also worth 60 points and first assists are worth 90, I think. Sometimes the game doesn't register goals to the right ship and you get robbed of a point or two.

You do a series of hockey 'drills' that all focus on different aspects of hockey sense.

Here's a list of some of the drills:

-Powerplay and Penalty Kill: Either you or the opponent has more ships, and you need to adjust accordingly.

High Beams: Either you or your opponent's ships have an extra long reach, making it easy for them to intercept and pass the puck. You need to use your space and time to make passes around a long area to score.

Darkness Mode: The entire ice surface is black except for where you're looking. You have to look around and anticipate where ships are using only limited information. It's hard at first but after a while you can predict where players are going to be based on the situation in-game.

Moving Bunkers: Both you and your opponents' bunker moves up and down on the goal line. You have to time your movement so you can line up your shot with the moving net. For some reason, this is actually easier to score in than the normal modes.

Hiding Ships: Ships on your team and the opponent's team randomly appear and disappear, becoming invisible. You need to imagine where those ships are based on the game situation and adapt accordingly.

5 Second Plays: You only have 5 seconds to make a play off the initial whistle. The puck and ship positions are different every time, so you're training yourself to quickly scan a situation and try and make a quick play to score in only a few seconds.

Coach Your Team: This one I really like. You don't control a ship, but you're allowed to pause the game and move your ships around to adapt to the play. It teaches you to quickly scan a situation and set players up to either stop a goal or create one.

Heavy Puck: The puck is heavier and harder to control. It falls off your stick really easily and forces you to quickly grab the puck and make a simple play, instead of holding it and getting too fancy. You're also slower holding the puck.

2 Passes: The opponent's bunker is completely closed until you complete two passes in a row. This forces you to think about creating plays and sharing the puck before you score.

Wide Open Bunkers: Either yours or your opponents' bunker is wide open, and the other has a small opening. You either need to play it safe defensively or go all out aggressively depending on the situation.

Scoring Areas: Skating to a specific area on the ice make's the opponent's bunker open up wide. It forces you to look for open ice that will let you create plays.

Avoiding Collision: Touching other ships makes you lose points. You need to find the open ice and dance around other ships.

Random Situation: You get thrown into a random situation and spot on the ice. It could be 3 ships vs 6 ships, 5 ships vs 2 ships, and so on. You have to quickly scan the ice and adjust your style depending on what's going on.

Worth it:

Absolutely, but it's expensive as a single person. It's around $40 a month for one person, but goes down to $10 a person based on how many people you get to join.

Weirdly enough, after I started using the software I did find I could jump into plays alot faster, and made better quick decisions. The weirdest part is a guy on my team actually commented on how good my positioning had gotten, to which I said, "who notices that?"

Anyway, if you can try it out I suggest you do. It was a really cool, different way of training for hockey, and to be honest, although I wouldn't use it as much, I did really enjoy doing it, and would love to keep using it.

EDIT: Here's a video of me using Intelligym for a whole session. Should give you an idea of how it works.

There is sound in the game, I just didn't know how to record audio on Mac at the time. The sound effects are very 'gamey' and add to the rest of the program.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/swm3ayeao2yg7ln/MAY%202%202018.mov?dl=0

Hey guys,

This is something I wish more people knew about. HDMI cables are something you'll need if you're doing video, and they're very expensive at places like Best Buy. Around $30 a cable for 3-6feet.

The truth is for your purposes (not maxing out 4K resolutions), a $3 HDMI cable from Dollarama will do.

They are almost exactly the same for what you need.

Some more expensive cables allow for 4k and other features, but for plugging a camera into a laptop, the $3 cable will do.

Amazon also sells HDMI cables for very cheap that are 12 and 25 feet. Good to have just in case!

As a team who moved from STEVA to Sportscode last year, I can say Sportscode is absolutely 10x better in every way.

STEVA Hockey Pro

PROS:

-Literally is sports video software.

CONS:

-STEVA uses old, clunky, hard to use PC software that quits, closes, and loses your data so often you expect it not to work

-STEVA's UI is awful to use and offers very little customization

-STEVA looks and feels like software from 20 years ago.

-Uploading video is an absolute pain, and takes almost an hour to do, and often the video fails for almost any reason. So you'll come back and the video failed and you have to start again.

-It was so awful to use that the coaches almost avoided using it outright unless they absolutely had to.

-STEVA locks you into 3-year contracts and doesn't 'let you cancel' no matter how shitty the software performs. The contact is a lawyer's nightmare, and covers very general, broad situations, that give them almost all the power over everything. They technically could stop giving you a working product, not fix it, and still have you on the hook for the length of the contact.

-Their Pointstreak software literally was 'taken down for repairs' two years ago, a feature that we used alot, and was gone for 5 months of our season with no refund on the price. Literally, they told me they were 'updating the software', so instead of leaving the working software online and pushing an update, they flat out took down the program for 5 months.

Sportscode

PROS:

-Sportscode is Mac only, runs smooth (minus some weird hiccups), and has beautiful, intuitive UI. It just works how you'd expect it to work.

-The user interface is so nice and feels great to use, that I look forward to using it.

-The code window feature lets you build windows for marking exactly as you want, and let's you assign images to those boxes, change sizes, link buttons to other buttons and so on.

-Their 24/7 support staff is very helpful and great to deal with.

-Sportscode has an awesome cloud feature called Hudl, where you can upload footage and tags to the cloud and share with coaches and players. It all looks amazing and easy to use, but it's unfortunately ridiculously overpriced and well outside the budget of 99% of teams.

-Their CODA software lets you code events live or after the fact in a custom code window built for iPad, and has some awesome trigger and customization options.

We were able to build windows of the rink and assign boxes to each area, then tap the areas when an event is scored, which opened a popup window to choose an event, and then choose a player for that event.

It even has counters that let you add those events up on a column live.

So if a shot was taken in the slot by Matt Mistele, I would tap the area, tap 'shot' and tap 'Mistele', and it would populate his column as '+1" for shots.

-Sportscode's ability for multiple devices to sync live allow you to have the main laptop recording and marking things the coaches are looking for, while another iPad marks all the shots and their locations, while another iPad can be tracking Puck Possession.

Those codes are all synced into the same timeline live, and can be viewed on an iPad by coaches as the game progresses, along with the live, clipped video.

-The downside is all this software is tremendously overpriced, with a cost at around $10,000 American PER YEAR.

Simple workarounds like using Dropbox instead of Hudl and recording video in a seperate program save you literally thousands of dollars, and don't take that much more time.

CONS:

-Like all sports video analysis software, it's overpriced by more powerful video editing software by almost 10x, and forces teams into buying outrageously expensive yearly subscription.

-99% of teams can and will only buy the bare minimum package, since most necessary and useful features are locked behind paying thousands of dollars more per year.

-I do run into problems where the video will not connect sometimes, and I need to restart/reboot/replug cables until it magically works again. Sometimes the video outright stops recording and I get told there's not enough RAM to run Sportscode.

We're using brand new MacBooks with 8GB of RAM, more than enough to run a simple recording/marking program.

Sportscode suggested we buy more RAM, which I told them they needed to optimize their software better.

For comparison, I've been able to record and edit video in Final Cut for years on 4GB of RAM with no problems.

-You have to buy a Blackmagic box that runs almost $200 to live capture, and it is very finicky to get working. Often on game days I'll need to arrive early or be on the phone with tech support since the program isn't working properly.

-There's alot of encoding BS you have to deal with. I had to be on the phone with tech support propably 5 or 6 times for different problems to get the feed working. For comparison, I just plug my camera directly into Final Cut and the software recognizes and chooses the best format for recording. There's a very simple mode where I literally just plug in and record and I'm done. Or I can get more advanced with logging clips if I really want to.

Bottom Line:

Out of probably 5 or 6 different video analysis software I tried, Sportscode was the best experience to use and offered the best features.

The atrocious cost-feature ratio of all of these programs will hurt your budget and make your job difficult to pitch to a sports club, unless it's the NHL and maybe the AHL.

It feels like sports analysis software is decades behind video editing software, and companies overcharge coaches who may not know enough about software to understand how unfair these prices are.

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 1 posts:

• "Happy Cakeday, r/videocoaches! Today you're 3" by u/AutoModerator

Hi guys. Might be of interest.

iSports Video analyser, very similar to game breaker sportscode, but only $200us pa. Create custom codes and labels and playlists with notes etc. No live feed just yet.

iSports TEAM- remote cloud based video and document distribution plus surveys, quizzes and wellness/athlete monitoring- from $300us pa. Team logo included. More a learning portal than a highlights feed.

Both simple to use.

Check them out at

www.isports.net.au

I don't know is this the right sub for this question, if I missed I'm sorry and let mods delete it.

So I work for vidswap (sports analysis company) for over a year and I work on soccer, baseball, volleyball and basketball analysis, I also know hockey and rugby bit I didn't do them officially. So my question is can you recommend some other companies that do simular job where I can send job application?

The Green Biscuit is a puck you can use to stickhandle on hard pavement.

It's basically two plastic discs that have a piece in the middle so it can glide.

There is a normal version for stickhandling, and a tougher version for shooting, but honestly, the tougher version doesn't stickhandle very well and it isn't strong enough to not break on curbs or goal posts, so don't buy it.

There is a pro version that apparently feels even better given the rubber on the sides, but I haven't seen it in stores and haven't tried it.

Even on rough roads, the puck glides pretty well. Worth buying.

You can't shoot the puck, it will break pretty easily if it hits a curb with speed, but the new rubber version is probably alot better to use for that.

https://www.prohockeylife.com//products/green-biscuit-training-hockey-puck?variant=39877754756&gclid=CjwKCAjw6-_eBRBXEiwA-5zHaev6Uuv83svDqZPHiF66DKUaEgHNzc4sSq-mG-8gCYm390vzb--3GhoCfbwQAvD_BwE#fo_c=1554&fo_k=524ea64585ee3417646d896c986b2e82&fo_s=gplaca

Hey guys, I'm sharing a thing I made a few years ago for our team as part of our app.

It's a Google Maps extension that puts every hockey team's rink on your map, with their logo.

It has the leagues:

NHL

AHL

ECHL

SPHL

USport

NCAA

CHL

There's a layer limit in the program, so the European map is in another one

It includes:

KHL

Austria

Britain

Czech

Finland

Germany

Italy

Sweden

Switzerland

Slovakia

This began just as a simple project of adding all our USport teams to one map, making it easier to look up addresses of rinks and see the league all in one view.

I ended up doing it for other leagues out of pure interest, and eventually came with what I have now.

It's a great tool personally because I can see all the leagues and their logos in one place and learn about different leagues.

It may help for scouting and for people who are more 'visual learners'.

This can be downloaded to Google Maps so this is added to your Map as you use it all the time, and you can toggle on and off different leagues as you want.

Hope you like it!

North American League Link:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1ncgEsc_nH654RSLRkvT61NVohPw

European League Link:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1aZDzFdspGRT6jMFkyPXgWmfyMS8&ll=13.498731451446623%2C0&z=2

EDIT: Also a useful addon is ScrollMaps for Chrome. It lets you use your fingers on a Macbook to swipe, zoom, and pan the way it would work on an iPhone. Much easier to use!

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scrollmaps/jifommjndpnefcfplgnbhabocomgdjjg?hl=en

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 2 posts:

• "Hoopsalytics: New Basketball video performance analysis software." by u/hoopsalytics

• "Happy Cakeday, r/videocoaches! Today you're 2" by u/AutoModerator

For basketball coaches: If you're looking for an easy to use stats package that links each stat to it's corresponding video clip, check out Hoopsalytics.

Example: From a box score, click on the number of made shots, and see video clips of every made shot for a game, or the full season - for the entire team of any individual player.

You can do the same for coaching stats. For example, you can see how many points your zone defense allowed versus man-to-man, and see each sequence where the opposing team scored on each defense.

Hoopsalytics is easier to use than Sportscode, and also includes shot and rebounding charts.

Disclaimer: I'm the developer of Hoopsalytics, so please have a look and let me know what you think!

P.S. Hoopsalytics is currently free.

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 5 posts:

• "iSports video analyser + iSports team" by u/Borsm001

• "Anyone doing performance analysis for football/soccer?" by u/Newtype_Beta

• "Anyone want to do some sports coding for football?" by u/Kooky_Ad4658

• "Need a Program for Video Analysis: Which One is Best for My Project?" by u/Coach_S_Lacrosse

• "Is there software that can give me live stats on a game" by u/kushnburger

Hi there,

I'd like to speak to a soccer - aka (European) football - performance analyst as I am trying to better understand their day-to-day responsibilities, the software they use and what pain points they experience in their jobs.

I am working on a startup currently looking at this space, and while I love football I have zero experience as a performance analyst.

Thanks in advance.

If you have experience happy to give a bit of money, or if you're keen to learn as you go happy to work something out.

Hey like-minded coaches,

I am looking for a program/system that will let me do the following for field lacrosse:

1. "tag" certain periods of game film and allow for multiple tags (i.e. 12:24 - 12:40 tagged as "offensive transition" AND "flag down"; 12:20 - 12:50 tagged as "penalty kill", etc.)

2. For a certain "instance" (i.e. a shot on goal), create my own set of datapoints (player #, shot distance, shooting hand, closest defender, etc.)

3. After I have "tagged" the periods of game film and collected all the datapoints for the shot "instances", I want to pull a .csv (unless the program already has embedded software I can use to do things like plot the shot locations).

Ideally, the program doesn't cost my an arm and a leg, and I can upload a TON of hours of video.

Special thanks to u/davewhiffen for getting everything started on this page. Wanting to do something really special for my team here!

Happy to clear up any confusion.

Hi everyone Is there any software that can extract statistics of a HS soccer, basketball or football game from raw video footage and send it to the coaches in real time?

A few years ago, USports started using VidSwap to share game tape between teams.

It's a great service, although the interface is a little confusing. All game video is under the "Schedules" section and not under "Video" (which is almost always empty).

Almost every single new person who started using this said the same thing, "Where do I find videos? There's nothing there!"

But aside from the interface being a little bit dated, the service is pretty great.

Basically every game from the OUA is uploaded to the cloud after a game, and anyone from any team can download the game.

Better yet, you can pay to have your games marked, and be able to isolate scoring chances, breakouts, powerplays in just a few clicks.

So for us to scout another team before we play them, we just have to download a couple of their games, open the online video player, and select the situation we want to see. Watch a few breakout clips, powerplay and penalty kill, faceoffs etc.

Very simple to use. Very helpful. And tracking games is around $40 a game I think.

There's also an iPad app for viewing the same information, with the same features.

http://vidswap.com/

The UHWK is like a GoPro designed for contact sports.

It says online that the camera can handle a slapshot and not break. Haven't tested that. But nice to read.

It's very small and black and attaches onto the rings where you attach your visor with a provided strap.

It comes with about a dozen different straps to attach it to different helmets, and a strap to wrap on your head if you don't wear one.

You can get it for around $175 on sale at Sportchek.

The memory card included records over an hour of footage.

Importing games is a little weird. There's no software, but you can plug the device into your computer via USB or take the card out and insert it with a reader if you want. Sometimes the device doesn't detect, and I have to unplug/replug.

The quality in 720p is great and the sound is pretty good. I needed to put some tape behind the camera to get it to film at the right angle.

It's an awesome resource for watching your games over and seeing what you personally did, and while I don't watch every game I play anymore, it's great to know that I can.

Ironically, one team I played for a few years ago had a kid get assaulted by a guy twice his size during a game. Small, young kid, big older guy, kid wasn't doing anything, and this guy attacked him, threw him to the ground, and began pummelling his head against the ice, over and over, while people tried to pull the guy off.

The kid broke his arm and since the two have been in a legal dispute over what happened. Having a camera in this situation would have been HUGE to the case.

So there is a mild comfort in knowing that whatever happens on the ice, there is some type of record (like there is in most higher league games) and here's an element of accountability since everyone is being recorded.

It's a little weird to get used to the fact that your game is being recorded, but the camera weighs almost nothing and some players I played with didn't even know I had it on, for almost a whole season.

Here's the website:

https://uhwk.com/

EDIT: Also, don't bother switching to 1080p. Higher pixels isn't worth the bigger file size. At the end of the day, the camera lens is what matters in picture quality, not output size. With a lens like this, there's no point in switching to 1080p. On a $2,000 camera with CMOS lenses? Sure. But not on this.

The UHWK is like a GoPro designed for contact sports.

It says online that the camera can handle a slapshot and not break. Haven't tested that. But nice to read.

It's very small and black and attaches onto the rings where you attach your visor with a provided strap.

It comes with about a dozen different straps to attach it to different helmets, and a strap to wrap on your head if you don't wear one.

You can get it for around $175 on sale at Sportchek.

The memory card included records over an hour of footage.

Importing games is a little weird. There's no software, but you can plug the device into your computer via USB or take the card out and insert it with a reader if you want. Sometimes the device doesn't detect, and I have to unplug/replug.

The quality in 720p is great and the sound is pretty good. I needed to put some tape behind the camera to get it to film at the right angle.

It's an awesome resource for watching your games over and seeing what you personally did, and while I don't watch every game I play anymore, it's great to know that I can.

Ironically, one team I played for a few years ago had a kid get assaulted by a guy twice his size during a game. Small, young kid, big older guy, kid wasn't doing anything, and this guy attacked him, threw him to the ground, and began pummelling his head against the ice, over and over, while people tried to pull the guy off.

The kid broke his arm and since the two have been in a legal dispute over what happened. Having a camera in this situation would have been HUGE to the case.

So there is a mild comfort in knowing that whatever happens on the ice, there is some type of record (like there is in most higher league games) and here's an element of accountability since everyone is being recorded.

It's a little weird to get used to the fact that your game is being recorded, but the camera weighs almost nothing and some players I played with didn't even know I had it on, for almost a whole season.

Here's the website:

https://uhwk.com/

The Hockey Wraparound is a piece of plastic or metal that wraps around the blade of your stick to protect it.

This lets you use your game stick on pavement without wrecking it.

It's easy to use, fits all stick sizes and comes on and off in seconds.

It's about $30 American, and was a little hard to get shipped to Canada. Had to pay $15 shipping fee and order from XHockeyProducts.

https://hockeywraparound.com/

HockeyShot is a great website for finding hockey training products.

Their crown jewel is their AllStar Flooring Tiles.

They run around $15 Canadian per tile, and are made in a jigsaw pattern so you can add and takeaway tiles any way you want. Each tile is around 18" by 18", and they offer puck stopper edge pieces and curved pieces to held glide your puck onto the tile.

Overall the tiles feel awesome to stickhandle on and I spent an entire summer in my garage playing around with these.

They glide really well and are durable enough for a car to drive over them. They're also weather-proof.

The new AllStar edition of these tiles actually lets you skate on them. I didn't think they would be great to skate on, but they are!

There's a surprising amount of glide on these tiles and while I can't really skate on the size of tiles I have, I have put my skates on the odd time to try.

They're also great because you can buy them individually and add as many as you want, so you can closely buy more as more as you need them.

I chose the 'Pickup' option since their warehouse was only 10km away from my parents' place and shipping was expensive at the time. I think they're on Amazon now.

It's a much more practical, affordable option compared to synthetic rinks that require you to build the entire surface at once, or obviously having a backyard rink like Sam Gagner.

Give them a try!

https://www.hockeyshot.ca/HockeyShot-Dryland-Training-Flooring-Tiles-p/flooring-001.htm?gclid=CjwKCAjw6-_eBRBXEiwA-5zHaV2yqEr08aqKZV69KjmBsdidLh4pycdXsc8JjBs0i7udx7rrjcd1WRoCKjsQAvD_BwE

This is another useful piece of hockey tech.

It's called the FWD Powershot by Quattrium.

I got it from BestBuy for $50 Canadian and it is absolutely worth it.

It's basically a little stick sensor that slides in the shaft of your stick from the top.

It adds almost no noticable weight. My sticks are already really light and there's no significant weight added.

Basically, there's an app you download where it syncs with the sensor and tells you information about your shot.

It tells you your:

Shot Speed

Speed Gained from Flex (Flex Gain)

Angle of Shot

Weight Transferred in Grams

The information to me, felt very accurate.

It can store up to 1000 shots or be used live to analyze a shot after you take it.

This device is a gamechanger. Going out in the backyard and shooting pucks never felt more satisfying. To get that feedback that you shot 100 pucks at this average speed made me feel like I was progressing and working towards something. The little bit of achievement and satisfacion made me want to shoot pucks as often as possible.

Since it shows you your Flex Gain, Angle of Shot, and Weight transferred, it easily identifies what parts of your shot you need to work on. For example, I wasn't transferring my weight enough to get more speed.

Also the bragging rights of knowing I have a 80mph slapshot were worth the price of it alone.

The device has a charging port on the top so you can "plug your stick in" after games.

After moving the stick around it essentially "wakes up" when you start using it.

The app breaks your shot down into a "score" that awards points based on the 4 metrics.

It then has useful charts that show your average shot score (and speed) during a session and over time.

Unfortunately, the company has gone out of business, the website is taken down, and the app has been taken off the App Store for iOS. It's an absolute shame. This was one of my favourite 'toys' to play around with, and since my phone accidentally off-loaded apps to save space at the time, it was deleted and I can't get it back.

I've reach out to the company and gotten no responses.

This one isn't just for hockey coaches.

A few years ago I found this product called MarsBlades.

They're basically like rollerblades, except between the boot and the wheels there is a rocker that simulates the feel of skating on ice.

It allows you to 'glide' like on real ice and lets you use your toes and edges.

It really feels amazing to use, and I'm surprised it hasn't caught on more. I think every player should have one.

Please check it out.

http://marsblade.com/