PRO'S CORNER: LIKE A GLOVE
Back in the day there weren’t a whole lot of choices in gloves. They were big, made of leather, often stuffed with wool or fur to make the padding, and more closely resembled heavy winter choppers. The modern hockey gloves are primarily made of tough nylon with specialty foams and plastics for padding. They’ve been scientifically developed to maximize both performance and protection. Choosing a glove now can be difficult with all of the choices available for beginners and pros alike!
FIT
How your gloves fit is both practical and preference. First, you want a glove that finds the balance between snug and sloppy. You should have some room for movement, but probably not be able to fit both hands and a foot inside. Every glove manufacturer makes a glove that is more narrow and one that is more of a loose fit. Which one you go with is up to your personal preference for performance.
The length of the glove is critical in that it affects both how the glove covers your fingers and your wrist. When trying on gloves, you don’t want your fingers extending beyond the end of the padding, and often you want about an ⅛ to ¼ inch of space at the end so the padding is more likely to get hit before your hand. The wrist area is totally up to personal preference. While history has given us absurdly long cuffs, most modern gloves are getting shorter and shorter. This is under the assumption that if you have less cuff, you have more flexion in your wrist for those sick dangles - some pros even cut the cuff off entirely. If you’re more of a net dog, corner warrior, or the player that’s just fast enough to stay one stride ahead of the D on a breakaway (resulting in lots of slashes), you may want to consider something that gives a bit more protection.
Generally, if you measure from the base of your palm to the end of your middle finger and double it, you’ll get a good starting point on your glove size. From there, try on gloves and see what fits you best.
FUNCTION
Once you find your general size, consider how gloves function in relation to your playing style. We already mentioned cuff length a bit, but let’s look deeper. With a longer cuff glove, a player will often do what they can (or have to) to open the cuff up more to maximize flexibility without a sense of sacrificing protection. This may be buying a wider style glove (Bauer 4-Roll, Eagle Aero, or Warrior Franchise), steam & heat treating the glove to try to stretch the materials, or even grab the nearest scissors to cut portions of the glove away. A shorter cuff, in contrast, will give a lot more movement from the start, but it can leave you more vulnerable in the wrist area between the elbow pad and top of the glove. Many manufacturers will make certain hig- end gloves with both longer and shorter cuff options, for those that have the ability to order them.
Another thing to consider, are the breaks manufacturers design into gloves. A classic design will have straight breaks across the back of the hand, 2 articulations in the fingers, and one overlapping articulation in the thumb. It’s a classic because it does what it needs to do from fit, function, and feel categories. Other gloves will add angled breaks in the back of the hand, which helps to make the glove contour you and your movements more uniformly. These gloves are often designed with the stick handlers in mind, and typically have a tighter fit. Some other unique glove designs over the years have removed (late 90’s CCM) or added (STX Halo) articulations from the fingers, merged multiple fingers (Mission), extremely wide (also Mission) or narrow like a lacrosse glove (STX & Warrior). There are reasons why none of these things have fully caught on or lasted, but there are a few that have been modified (or should we say perfected) into the modern gloves. What the next innovation or gimmick will be, no one really knows, but what we can guarantee is that some hockey player out there tried it at least once.
FEEL
Like most equipment, this is probably one of the critical aspects of a glove choice. You can get a glove that technically fits you. You can do all the research and learn all the specs for why a glove is the way it is, but the biggest question is: do you like it? Does it feel right on your hands? Do you want to play more than one hockey game in those gloves? If the answer is no to any of those, then you may want to move to something else. No matter how well something fits or how much science has gone into developing it, if it’s not comfortable, you won’t wear it properly and it won’t perform properly for you.
WHAT THE PROS KNOW
Pros have been playing hockey for a long time. Not only are they often subject to their own long-standing preferences, but they also get to try on anything they want and get to customize them nearly however they want. The good news is that sometimes you can get what they pros get with pro-stock returns. Pro stock return gloves, like the ones we have available, can be brand new, well-loved, or all points in between. If you want a glove that’s already broken in, we’ve got you covered! Looking for a glove that has a little more protection in the back hand? We’ve got pro stock gloves for that, too! A pro stock glove is also a great way to get a high-end glove for a fraction of the price off the rack, plus you get the benefit of bragging to your teammates (or a random Facebook group) about the cool gloves you got that used to belong to [insert player name].