THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 3, 1994 TAG: 9408040820
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
THERE'S NOTHING simpler than a hockey puck.
Even a zero has two parts, circle and hole. A puck is just a puck.
Except in Larchmont. In that Norfolk neighborhood, in the garage of a janitorial supplies salesman named John Vellines, a multi-layered street hockey puck adapted for use on paved playing surfaces has a plurality of like-sized discs axially aligned and fastened together at their centers.
Vellines' puck has color, holes, moving parts and U.S. Patent 5,269,520.
It is Lazerpuk.
Not Mr. Zippy or Wonderpuk or Tidewater Twister or any of the other names Vellines and his cousin Bruce Eley thought up, then rejected. And certainly not Laser Puck, the name mistakenly printed on thousands of $5 pucks shipped by Mylec, the nation's leading street hockey equipment maker.
It is Lazerpuk, and it is revolutionary.
Not being Wayne Gretzky, you may not appreciate what Vellines and Eley have done for street hockey. You may not know the immense difference between a hard rubber puck skimming across Zambonied ice and a sad plastic jobber stuttering over hot suburban asphalt.
Most street hockey players use a ball, which doesn't feel at all like a puck but at least moves. Some use a hybrid, a puck equipped with ball bearings, but those bearings wear down, and the puck tends to roll on its side.
The Lazerpuk does what a good puck should.
``John gave me a call out of the blue and explained he had this new puck and it was better than anyone else's puck, and it did this and did that,'' said Rick Laperriere, who's in charge of new product development at Massachusetts-based Mylec.
``I said, `Yeah, sure, sure, sure.' ''
Laperriere, having grown up in the shadow of the Mylec factory, knows pucks.
``We took a look at it and played around with it,'' Laperriere said. ``We tried some ideas, made a bunch of samples, all kinds of different designs and so on, and we always came back to this puck.''
This puck. Vellines, a big 40-year-old man, gestured in his living room with a blue and green one. Another one serves as a coaster for his iced tea.
``Their R&D guy came to me and said, `For 15 years I've tried to come up with a puck that works on the street,' '' Vellines said, recalling how the guy had wrapped his Lazerpuk in rubber, made it smaller - Lazerpuk is bigger than the average puck - changed the holes. ``Nothing he did worked better than what I'd handed him.''
What Vellines had submitted was made of an old truck bed liner. Four bologna-size slices drilled out and held together by a post. A weird object dreamed up by men who, Vellines said, ``mustered our talents of Blair and Maury days in mechanical drawing.''
``Rube Goldberged it,'' said Eley.
But the physics are sophisticated. The key to their design is layers.
``We tried the solid puck,'' said Eley, 43. ``It tends to bounce all over the place.''
``If you drop a phone book on the ground it doesn't bounce,'' Vellines said. He dropped a phone book, which behaved as predicted.
``Why is that? It absorbs the shock between the pages.'' His son John and a friend teetered through the living room on Rollerblades. ``I'm in the middle of something!'' Vellines complained, picking up his Lazerpuk again.
``As it slides across the surface, as it encounters the things that cause the normal puck to flip and roll, the layered design tends to dampen it,'' he explained.
But the Lazerpuk rockets off a curb like an ice hockey puck off a goal post. And while the holes make it lighter than a solid hunk of plastic, it has an authentic heft that makes players want to wear pads.
``The ball is, like, wild. It goes everywhere,'' said Keith Johnson, 10, goalie of the Cambridge Capitals, the neighborhood team Vellines' son plays for. With Lazerpuk, Johnson said, ``it's more like real hockey.''
But verisimilitude may not guarantee sales of Lazerpuk, Laperriere said, explaining: ``Hockey's a very traditional sport. People in hockey are some of the most superstitious people in sports. Change is slow and getting new things accepted is tough. This may never be accepted by leagues, but we believe it has a consumer appeal to the kid.''
Rollerblade agrees. The company has a deal with Mylec that will see Lazerpuks shipped under a Rollerblade line in the fall.
Vellines and Eley have named their own company All-Net Sports Inc., after the basketball phrase ``nothing but net.''
Yet there's another explanation. ``The key underlying thing is nothing but greed,'' Vellines said. ``If we do this right, we get a check every quarter, and it's nothing but net.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by IAN MARTIN
John Vellines and his son John worked together on the Lazerpuk.
John Vellines, 10, show off two of the colorful street hockey pucks,
while his father steps into goal during a neighborhood game.
Graphics
HERITAGE OF INVENTION
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
HOCKEY CLINIC
Hampton Roads Admirals stars Dennis McEwen, Rod Taylor and
Brendan Curley will lead the Second Annual Hampton Roads Inline
Hockey Skills Clinic. Beginning and experienced players will be
drilled in skating, shooting, puck handling and goaltending
techniques.
The first session is Aug. 15-20 at Haygood Skating Center in
Virginia Beach. The second is Aug. 22-27 at Kempsville Skating
Center in Virginia Beach. The cost is $100 per student. Call
671-7182 for more information.
by CNB