When Frederik Andersen got his first pair late this summer from Bauer he called me over in the room just to show me. Our initial reaction was a shared one, in which we just couldn't really believe how small they were. We kind of chuckled, looked at each other, and realized we were stuck with what they were. His concern was protection, as I think is every goalie in the NHL?s primary concern when it comes to the reduction of gear size. I remember sliding them on and feeling like I was in a player?s girdle. The mobility was crazy, they weighed a fraction of the pants I was currently wearing and the pants I was currently wearing weighed a fraction of what I was wearing prior. Based on that comparison alone I knew that these pants would go a long way toward making the athletic freaks that mind NHL nets even freakier, precisely what the NHL was trying to avoid.
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The first time I skated with these new pants can only be described as a blessing from the Goalie Gods themselves. I have been working very hard lately at my game to get my conditioning to a level I haven?t attained before rather than being content with where I am as an athlete. Just wearing these pants over my old ones made the work I've done feel like it had been twice as effective. I was moving completely fluidly and effortlessly around the crease, low and strong with nothing holding me back on my pushes. I was getting to my spots in plenty of time and expending less energy to get there. I was making saves on good low shots that I hadn't been making in a long, long time just due to a restored range of motion I had been missing. The strain I had felt on my stance disappeared as I didn't have to structurally support gear too large for me any longer. My groin no longer had to work overtime to try and keep my legs together in spite of the naturally spread gait of the original 1s. The holes in my RVH closed themselves & my chest and pants now interact seamlessly rather than constantly battling each other to be the one that stops the puck. Even absorbing shots to the gut and chest has become automatic, a simple skill I couldn't for the life of me execute, as the original 1s pants made it near impossible to fold over on pucks fluidly. It was the first time I have truly felt like myself in a long time.
