Special Interest > Roller Hockey

Roller... Yay or Nay?

<< < (5/5)

jvreagan:
Connor McDavid on roller hockey: https://www.tsn.ca/mcdavid-credits-rollerblading-for-smooth-skating-1.1183845

lcadad:
I grew up playing Ice and had a long youth career up into college.   As an adult I had all but given up on the sport.  I was visiting a high school friend of mine who had some roller blades and let me try them out.  Within 5 minutes I was sold.  For the next year or so I played a bunch of roller exclusively and that experience sucked me back into playing Ice. 

After about a year of roller, my ice skating technique was fairly messed up, and it took me probably 4-5 hours my Ice skating get back the feeling of skating normally again, but after that, I had no problem going back and forth between them. 

For a while I played both Ice and Roller and it wasn't unusual for me to have a couple of hours of Ice, and a couple of hours of roller in any given week.  I also spent a lot of hours playing pickup in the parking lot of the Santa Monica peer, where they used to, and perhaps stilll do play using trashcans as goals.  As an adult, I can speak to the benefits they provide in tandem.  Skating on ice is certainly different, and the difference in strategy between the rulesets of Ice and roller are substantial, but what you get from roller is often improved puck handling skills due to the fact that you have to constantly and assuredly attend to the puck since it doesn't glide the way a puck on ice does.  Your stick handling has to be cleaner and stronger, and you often see people who have played a lot of roller exhibit great puck control and that translates well to Ice. 

Anyone who tells you that roller isn't worth doing or is in some way detrimental to the Ice game doesn't know what they are talking about.   

socal03:
Yay.  Certainly not all, but many of the top ice players in the area have leveraged roller to some extent for its numerous benefits, with making hockey even more FUN being the number one reason, as the top ice players typically dominate the roller tournaments.  There's a new batch of success stories that will go even further in proving roller has posed little to no adverse impact on reaching some of the highest levels on the ice.   

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page