Advice on skating and playing hockey

Learning to play hockey has been on my bucket list for awhile. You have to start somewhere — I had the first of seven skating lessons the other night. I move about as well as Dave Andreychuk on meth, but at this point, whatever. I'm on my way.

I skated in rental skates, and I don't want to do that again. Lord. So I need some down and dirty advice on buying skates, where to go, what to look for, how much to expect to spend and so on. I'm reasonably close to Buffalo.