The Proper Fit for Hockey Glove

When fitting a glove there are many things to consider. Overall comfort and snugness through the hand, finger length, thumb protection and mobility, wrist protection, and ease of dropping… just in case. Kidding! Although standing in the sports section and throwing the gloves to the floor as fast as you can does get some interesting reactions from customers and salespersons alike. Here are what you really to look for in buying a glove.

Some like it tight. Some like ‘em loose. Although it’s a personal preference there are some facts to take into consideration. If a glove is too loose and turns on a players hands, it reduces the gloves ability to perform it’s primary objective, and that is adequate protection. Too loose and it will also inhibit your play. You want the glove to follow your movement as naturally as possible and not shift or roll on you when you’re trying to ‘dangle’.

A snugger fit provides more control over the stick and keeps the protection in place. New gloves (Nike, I believe) coming out now claim to “fit like a golf glove.” Imagine that. The glove should be snug enough without chafing or restricting movement but shouldn’t be so small that your fingers are jammed in and touching the ends.

If the fingers are touching the ends, this is not only uncomfortable, but they may be exposed to injury by a slash. Most gloves now are allowing for increased movement in the fingers by separating the fingers from one another and making the joints more flexible. The same for the thumb. Just make sure that they have backwards protection or a lock-thumb system that will protect the thumb from being bent backwards. Flexibility in the fingers and thumb also comes in handy for the late light adult pick-up hockey games for easy grip of cans of beer that can often been seen positioned besides the water bottles, Gatorade and TUMS.

A hockey glove offers a balance of mobility and protection. For increased mobility the cuffs of the glove are becoming shorter and wider. “Segmented cuff,” “Ergo cuff,” “Flex-Zone cuff system,” are all manufacturers terms for these re-designed cuffs that allow for greater mobility and therefore, hopefully, greater stick control and stick handling. What tends to suffer in some of these designs is the necessary protection for the wrist and forearm.

Ideal protection would have the glove extend up to the forearm to the bottom of the elbow pads. Probably not going to happen nowadays, so try to at least minimize the gap between the two. Because of these shorter cuffs, a relatively new piece of protective equipment is available, wrist guards. They are simply terry cloth wristbands inserted with molded plastic.

Gloves come in a range of sizes, anywhere from Youth 8” to Senior 16”. The way to measure yourself – the potential for base humour here is outstanding – is to put on your elbow pad and measure the distance between the end of the pad and your finger tips. This number equals your glove size. Different manufacturers use different sizing methods, but this measurement a good indicator of the glove size you should buy.