After the first team meeting of the New Jersey Devils’ 2018 development camp, Bobo Carpenter, who attended it as an invitee, had some time to burn.
So, he decided to walk around Prudential Center.
“Being a player, you don’t really get to see what the fans see up there,” said Carpenter, a center who’ll be entering his senior season with the Boston University Terriers this fall.
During his travels around the arena, he stopped for a few minutes when he saw a picture of the Devils’ 1995 Stanley Cup championship club, taken during the team’s 20th anniversary celebration in March 2015, and studied all of the players’ skates.
Carpenter then took a closer look at the skates of his father, Bobby, who played 18 National Hockey League seasons and was a center on that team.
“I saw my dad had these old skates with no design,” he said. “All of his old teammates have the new designs, like the players have now.”
Carpenter chuckled.
“That’s my dad right there,” he continued. “Never changing. They might not be the same pair he has now, but he always has the same brand, design, all of that. He never changes that. Ever.”
For the most part, Carpenter, who turns 22 years old on Aug. 16, has followed in his dad’s footsteps in that regard, ever since he started skating at age 4 on his family’s backyard rink in Albany, N.Y.
Back then, the North Reading, Mass., native wore double-runner skates.
“They were flat metal, and on the bottom each one had two rows of blades, so I could just stand on them,” Carpenter explained. “Each one had a blue plastic zip-tie type of thing so you could tie each foot up real tight. That’s what I wore growing up.”
If given the opportunity, he would’ve never gotten rid of them. “My dad had to hide them from me,” Carpenter remembered. “I always wanted to go back to them from regular skates.”
Bobby made sure to dispose of them after about two years.
“He urged me to get into regular skates,” Carpenter said before smiling and adding, “which was probably for a good cause.”
From that point on, Carpenter has been a loyal wearer of CCM skates, excluding one brief uncomfortable moment when he tried on skates of a different brand.
“I’ve never changed,” he asserted. “I’ve always been a CCM person. I break them in easily, and I feel most comfortable on the ice skating in them.”
Carpenter remembers when he first obtained a brand-new pair like it was yesterday.
“My dad bought them for me in Reading (Mass.) when I was a sophomore in high school,” he said. “They were CCM U+, blue. They were nice. I was pumped about that because I finally stopped growing!”
Every year since then, Carpenter has tested CCM’s newest model at that respective time. For the most part, he opts to upgrade. However, one particular time he didn’t switch stands out above the others.
“I stayed with the pair I wore as a freshman at BU my sophomore year,” he said. “I had some foot problems and I didn’t want to go through another phase of switching. I focus on being comfortable more than anything.”
But after chatting with CCM prior to his junior season, Carpenter made his latest leap, to the JetSpeed.
“CCM said it would make the boot a little less stiff,” the 5-foot-11, 185-pounder said. “I like the softness.”
Carpenter’s also had some other alterations made to his skates, which he didn’t know was possible at first. Naturally, he’s now nothing short of ecstatic.
For starters, since his feet have a high arch, CCM raises the eyelets of each skate up a quarter inch, so the top of his feet aren’t crushed by the laces. Also, each skate has a wide boot to accommodate his wide feet.
“I never knew they could make these changes,” Carpenter said, beaming from ear to ear. “When I heard that, I was in heaven. I didn’t have to worry about those things anymore. Those two changes have really helped.”
After receiving advice from his father, Carpenter has made another adjustment, switching to a felt tongue.
“It’s really comfortable for me, because of the way the laces bite down on my foot,” he said. “I really like it and ask for that every time.”
This past Christmas break, Carpenter made one final alteration when he changed the radius of his skate blades’ hollow from 5/8 inches to 3/4.
“My coaches told me I have a lot of power, and I didn’t need the 5/8,” he explained. “I’d still be able to get into the ice after the switch. I didn’t really notice a big difference, but it’s there. I felt a little lighter on the ice and didn’t feel as though I was digging in as much. The change didn’t really give me that traction like the first one. It helped and I felt less fatigued.”
Then, going against nearly everything his dad believes in when it comes to skates, Carpenter concluded, “The change was good. I’m glad I did it.”
