Today, I can walk into a brick-and-mortar Pure Goalie store in Marlboro, Mass., or Dover, N.H., or Long Island, N.Y., or a Hockey Monkey in Norwood, Mass., or Derry, N.H., or Woodbridge, N.J., and I’m simply blown away by the amount of goalie gear these places carry. Even well into my 50s, I still feel like the proverbial kid in a candy store.
Where were these stores when I was a kid? Granted, when I was in high school, in the 1970s, we goalies in Manchester, N.H., were lucky enough to have a place called Barrett’s on Maple Street, which actually dedicated an entire wall to goalie gear. Given the sparse selections that were available in northeastern New Jersey, where I grew up before moving north, I was ecstatic with having an above-average selection.
