Like most hockey players during the summer, our recent focus has been on training and improving our skills. The perfect way to improve your game on the ice, is to train off the ice. With the help of the Green Biscuit, and the team over at HockeyShot.com who graciously sent us one to review, we’ve been able to put this training puck to the test to see if it handles as described.
If you’re not familiar with the Green Biscuit puck, it is an off-ice training hockey puck that will help you and your friends or teammates develop passing and stickhandling skills that will blow your competition away. The Biscuit weighs about an ounce less than a hockey puck but with the added friction from the concrete or asphalt it acts just like the real thing on ice.
The rink we play on outside has a painted concrete surface, where you typically need a ball to practice stick handling. Immediately after I began skating with the Green Biscuit, I noticed the performance benefits that it offered over a traditional roller hockey puck on outdoor surfaces. The Biscuit moved quickly and fluidly as I handled it back and forth, without ever slowing or stopping like I expect with other pucks. The only time I ever noticed an issue is if I moved the puck back and forth too fast. Sometimes, under those circumstances, the puck would roll up on to its side. This was not a huge issue for us, however, and rarely did we ever stick handle fast enough to make it happen.
Once we began passing, I fell in love with the Biscuit even more. Short passes, quick passes, long passes, saucer passes, or any other type of pass we attempted, went off without a hitch. Even the speed of the pass was just as you might expect playing ice hockey or indoor roller hockey. Being able to pass this easily on an outdoor surface allowed us to run some great passing and skating drills with ease. One in particular that some skaters might find effective would be simply skating with the puck while keeping your head up. You can easily feel the Green Biscuit on your blade and knowing the puck isn’t going to randomly stop on you makes running these types of drills a lot more fun and less frustrating.
Durability of the Green Biscuit is honestly where I expected to be disappointed. However, after about ten hours of actual use on the rink, I’m still not seeing an noticeable difference in performance. You can see the puck itself is picking up some nice scratches from sliding, but nothing has broken it. We have actually been pretty rough on the puck too, making some hard passes off of the boards, as well as long and high saucer passes. The only thing we haven’t done is shoot the puck. For obvious reasons, when you see the two-piece puck, you’re not going want to try taking shots with it. It simply isn’t manufactured to take a beating like that.
Overall, we’re really pleased with performance and durability levels provided by the Green Biscuit training puck. You’ll find that if you’re trying to improve your stick handling or passing while on an outdoor surface, the Green Biscuit is the perfect puck for you. At only $10.95, the Green Biscuit at HockeyShot.com is a must have training product. If you want to grab one for yourself, head over to HockeyShot.com.