I’ve been playing hockey for a little more than a year now. I’m not very good, but I am getting better. In between games, I’ve been using an in-development game and training tool called Dangleverse, which helps me practice outside of the rink.
Hockey is an expensive sport. The equipment simply costs a lot, and you’re paying a rink every time you step on the ice.I get out there to practice pretty frequently. I play in either pickup or league games twice a week, practice with a coach, and drop into public skating sessions whenever I can. There are ways to practice at home, and I do that too, like shooting pucks at a net in my garage. Occasionally, I’ll aimlessly stickhandle a golf ball around my living room floor.
There’s, of course, equipment you can buy to optimize stickhandling practice off-ice, be it training panels that light up or obstacles to move the puck around. These often require the player to look down at the tools; for the complicated trainers that light up as an indicator of where to move up, it’s especially important to be looking directly down at the device. But in hockey, looking up is essential. You need to be able to see your teammates and opponents.
It requires two devices, but I’m using three — my phone to track the puck, my husband’s iPad to display the video game, and then casting the video game to TV. On the floor, I’ve set up the faux ice panel I typically shoot off of in my garage. That’s what my phone is pointed at, using a macgyvered stand, to track my stick and puck. The puck is essentially the controller, and your stick is your fingers pushing its joystick around. Looking up at the screen, I use my stick to push the puck around and make the on-screen character dodge walls and collect coins.
It’s quite simple, and I’ve only played it on the easy mode so far. But I can see the value both as a training tool and simply for fun. My husband and I are already trying to prove who’s got the best stickhandling and reaction skills, and I’m working on an essential mechanic while building strength in my wrists. (Stickhandling is really taxing on the arm holding the top of the stick; there’s a lot of quick wrist movements.)
Nickolay Lamm, Dangleverse’s creator, told me that the idea started as a Peloton for hockey; he and two others actually first built a small miniature hockey rink. But that was too far, something too inaccessible. They started thinking about software and a way to use tracking technology Lamm had been working on to make a stickhandling video game. Lamm said it took about five or six months to make a demo.
“The risk in this whole little adventure was, What if what you see on this game is too laggy for the speed of a hockey puck?” he said. “That was my risk, because no one had ever made a video game based off a sports object, especially something as fast moving as a hockey puck.”
It works pretty well, with minimal lag — at least, if you have a good internet connection. Lamm said with a good internet connection, there’s about five frames of lag, “which is actually pretty similar to what you get from a normal joystick.”
Lamm intends Dangleverse to be fun first, training second. “People like [hockey influencer] Pavel Barber, for example, they’re extremely skilled hockey players,” Lamm said. “They can do things which no one else does, but if you look at their TikTok feeds, there’s no training. It’s all entertainment.” Lamm’s right; Barber’s Instagram page is filled with skits, like one where he attacks a training dummy dressed as ref in increasingly ridiculous ways, another where he takes a slapshot using a comically long stick while standing on a Zamboni, or a series where he attempts to Michigan with things that aren’t hockey sticks. (A Michigan is a lacrosse-style move wherein the player scoops up a puck to toss it into the net, rather than shoot it. It’s very hard.)
“In much of the same way, this product is all entertainment and training is just a side effect,” Lamm said. “You know, kids play hockey all day. And the last thing they want to do is more training at home.”
