Buying hockey gear with Cam Neely
ARLINGTON -- A labor dispute may sideline professional hockey for the season, but recreational players are lacing up their skates and hitting the ice -- eager to slap-shoot their way through another New England winter.
Use terms like "slap shot" in front of former Boston Bruins right winger Cam Neely and his eyes light up like a playoff scoreboard. The great Number 8, who retired in 1996, still loves the game, and we recruited him to advise pee-wee league parents and weekend defensemen on buying hockey equipment.
One of his favorite shops is here. Called Sports Etc., it's a family-run business specializing in hockey gear. These days, Neely runs the Neely Foundation for Cancer Care in Boston and lives in the suburbs with his wife and two children, 4 and 6, who are just getting into the sport.
He says he can't remember his first pair of skates, because "when you grow up in Saskatchewan you're practically born with skates on." But he does recall the first helmet he ever got. He was about 6 years old and it was a Cooper, delivered as a matching set to him and his brother, via Santa Claus.
"All of my hockey equipment as a kid came at Christmas," says Neely, 39, whose number was retired to the FleetCenter rafters in January. "We went outside, played with whatever was under the tree."
Today, kids play in more structured situations, joining teams by the time they're in the first grade. Neely said he knows how tough it is for parents to deny their children anything, but he cautions against overspending on equipment their children may grow out of, or buying something because it's all the rage at the local rink.
Safety and fit, he says, are the most important aspects of hockey equipment, and neither has to come at a steep price. For example, Neely favors wooden sticks for beginners because they are relatively durable, cheap, and he thinks every kid should get the feel of playing with a wooden stick.
"I'm old-school about that," he says. Serious adult players, though, should go all-out high tech on equipment, he says, because the bigger the player, the rougher the game, the greater the need for pricey protection.
According to the National Sporting Goods Association in Mount Prospect, Ill., Americans spent $67.2 million on hockey skates and $59.1 million on sticks in 2003. And, according to research done by Modell's sporting goods chain, 46 percent of all hockey gear sold nationwide is bought in New England.
Neely said parents and adult players should find stores whose primary focus is outfitting hockey players. He said the best shops will spend plenty of time adjusting pads, pants, girdles, skates, gloves, shin pads, and sticks to match the body type, skill, and age of the player.
Neely, whose career ended when he was just 31 due to injuries, had custom-designed equipment in his pro career, with trainers making constant adjustments for the best protection. When he skates with his son and friends now, "it's on a smaller sheet of ice," but he still wears some of the equipment that helped power him through 10 years as a Bruin.
"I gotta say," he laughs, "the stuff is all smelly."
