Similar to gloves, protection leads the way, but you want to ensure leg mobility with the adequate size. Hopefully, the palms don’t wear through too quickly, or you’ll need a new pair. Colors matter when uniforms are bit more uniform for older players, but every brand offers a variety of colors. Protection and size are the go-to things here. Nobody plans on falling, but it happens, and ensuring elbow safety goes a long way. Many skaters are quick to do a helmet, skates, gloves and stick check, be it heading outdoors or an optional skate, but elbow pads should be added to that list. The pads are bigger, tougher and made of high-caliber plastics and fibers designed to protect players. It’s a driving factor behind the significant changes made to shoulder pads over the years. Shoulder joints, collar bones, scapulae and the adjacent muscles, ligaments and tendons all need protection. Hockey is a physical sport, and it begins with the shoulders.Ĭhecking is a large part of the game, whether you throw hits or receive them. An extra layer wrapped around the neck to protect from inadvertent skates and sticks. Junior players are required to wear neck guards. Just make sure it stays in your mouth, even if Matthew Tkachuk is your favorite player. In maintaining head protection, the mouthguard goes a long way in keeping a hockey smile full of teeth and containing the natural physicality of the game. Once you reach the necessary level, full cages and shields become half visors, or some players scrap them altogether, such as Ryan O’Reilly, the last grandfathered player in the NHL allowed to not wear a visor. You can buy the whole package, but you also can buy different sizes and shapes for cages or full visors. Protecting the head means a lot more in modern culture than it did when I was younger, but having a safe helmet fitted correctly should be of primary concern, well above the cost for such protection. It wasn’t until I grew older that I finally understood the endless hand-me-downs and appreciated my parents’ forfeited nights and weekends.Ĭontinuing to play into adulthood and watching the never-ending improvements of equipment and rising costs along the way brings us here how much does it really cost to play hockey? Learn-to-skate, house leagues, travel programs, school teams – my brothers and I did it all, and my parents dished out every penny it took for gear, gas, ice fees, out-of-state tournaments – even some injuries and surgeries along the way. My parents not only shuttled us to practices and games at all hours and spent entire evenings at the rink when our teams’ schedules conflicted, they paid for it all.

I had three older brothers who all played, too, and for a number of years, we all played at once. I grew up playing the best sport in the world: ice hockey.

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