THE GEAR

Had my last helmet for a long time and the padding was getting pretty worn out and weird. When I picked up a new half visor it felt like the right time to get a new helmet too. The RE-AKT 90 is very adjustable and fits better than the last one did. I really like the look of a clean white helmet.

I run my half visor on this one. It's not heavy on the head and I wear it every time I play. Great helmet.

February 2025, Saturday pickup game. I took a high stick right between my eyes, right between the eyebrows. Open gash, bleeding a lot, ended up getting seven stitches. I was wearing a helmet when it happened, which is more than a lot of guys at pickup can say, but my helmet didn't have a visor on it.

That was the moment. Started wearing the Bauer Pro Straight half visor right after and haven't taken it off since. Got used to it quickly and honestly enjoy having it on. Eyes and forehead stay protected and the open lower face keeps the breathing and communication on the surface where it should be.

Started wearing a mouthguard several years back. Wasn't from a specific injury, just figured I should be protecting my face and teeth at some point. The big thing for me was that I didn't want anything bulky. I still want to be able to communicate with my line on the surface, and a lot of mouthguards make that hard.

The SISU Aero literally comes flat. You drop it in hot water, fold it onto your teeth, and that's it. It's thin, you can talk and breathe normally, and the fit ends up custom because you molded it to your own bite. I've had a few of these over the years and I really like them.

Added this after taking a hard elbow to the ribs in the 2025 NBHL season. The kind of hit that shuts you down for a few weeks and makes you rethink what you're wearing on the surface. The AK5 has honeycomb foam over the torso, spine, and lower back, which is exactly the area that takes contact when someone catches you off-balance. Goes on as a base layer under the jersey, doesn't restrict movement, and you forget it's there until the moment it does its job. I keep a few in rotation now.

I've been wearing these since around 2017. Nothing specific happened to make me start. It just got into my head that not wearing elbow pads on the surface was nuts.

Ice hockey elbow pads don't really fit ball hockey. We're not getting checked, we're not wearing long sleeves, and the form factor is too bulky for how we play. But your elbows are pointy and they get into things. Other people's helmets, other people's sticks, the boards. Even on the forearms I'm constantly getting sticks and ending up with bruises and bumps. Going around someone, fishing for a puck, drifting near the boards, your elbows take a lot of contact you don't necessarily plan for.

These McDavids are the right shape for it. Not overly bulky, comfortable, still protective, with a little compression to keep them in place. They've held up for years.

I've been a Bauer Vapor guy for the last 15 or so years. Same brand, same line, same P88 curve, left handed, senior chin-length cut. The only thing that changes is which model in the Vapor line I'm running.

When I was younger I used to just buy the top-tier stick every time. That stopped making sense. These sticks have gotten so unbelievably expensive that the flagship model is hard to justify, especially because they snap. What I do now is grab last year's second-from-the-top, the upper-tier model that isn't the flagship. They're not the heavy entry-tier sticks, but they aren't priced like the new top model either. You can get two of them for the price of one flagship if you go back a model year.

That's the play. End of 2025 I bought two of these X5 Pros. A few years before that I grabbed three of the equivalent at the time. The harder part is sourcing them, because lefty + P88 is one of the more common combos, so they go fast and there isn't always inventory in my flex. When I find them in stock I buy a couple at a time.

70 flex, P88, grip finish. Same setup I've been on forever.

I've gone through a lot of these gloves over the years. Most lacrosse gloves end up ripping around the inside of the thumb and occasionally the palm, and once they start ripping I get rid of them. The Vapor Selects in white are what I've been running.

Why lacrosse gloves at all comes down to a March 2017 injury. I broke my left thumb. I was wearing low-profile dek hockey gloves at the time, the kind everyone used to wear back then. They were almost like padded gardening gloves with a little protection on the back of the hand and not much else. I went to the slot to shoot on a cold late night and a defender came down to stop the shot. The shaft of his stick caught my thumb as it was coming forward into the shot. Three pins, surgery, weeks with the pins sticking out of my hand.

After that I didn't want to go all the way to ice hockey gloves because they're too bulky for ball hockey, but I needed real protection. Lacrosse gloves split the difference. The thumb cuff and finger gussets are reinforced for stick checks, and the form factor still lets you handle the stick the way you want to. I've been on lacrosse gloves ever since and have only had a few close calls, no severe hand or finger injuries since.

Started wearing these years ago because of how shin guards used to behave. The older ones I had wouldn't stay up. If they fell down mid-game your knee was exposed and you'd skin it on the surface, which is a small thing that turns into an annoying thing for the rest of the game and not worth dealing with.

The fix was compression padded knee sleeves that stay locked in place, with the shin guards over top. I pull the sleeves up a bit higher on the knee, so even if the shin guard slips a little there's still padding covering the kneecap. With the Knapper 555v2 shin guards I run now, this is honestly not strictly necessary since those stay put really well. But I still wear them. They fit, they don't get in the way, and I don't like getting hurt.

Been wearing variations of padded compression shorts for a long time. They take the sting out of knees, sticks, and stray contact to the thighs, and if you go down on a hip or backside they make a fall on the surface a lot less of a thing.

What pushed me to these specific Knapper shorts is the cup pouch. For years I didn't wear a cup because most of the other padded shorts I owned didn't have a place for one and I never bothered with a separate jock strap. The AK5s come with a cup shell built in, so the answer became easy. Just protecting the body.

Just started running these recently since they're a newer model. First impression is they feel very light. The Exostretch design splits the front shin panel a bit so it wraps around the leg, which is comfortable and probably trades off some protection compared to a solid panel. Fit is great. They stay put better than anything else I've worn, and the elastic at the top keeps them locked in. I run socks over them anyway so movement is a non-issue.

Honestly nothing bad to say. They're cloth-bodied, so you can't slide on them the way you can with hard plastic shin guards, but I don't really go down to slide anyway so it's a non-factor for how I play.

I take a lot of sticks and slashes to the feet, so the shoe matters. The AK7 has extra padding across the top over the laces and a more reinforced toe than a standard tennis shoe. I still get slashed in the toes plenty and end up with black and blue toenails, but it would be way, way worse without these. The protection is real even when it doesn't feel like it.

Where these really stand out is wet conditions. Rain or a damp deck surface destroys most footwear; the AK7 grip and traction is way better than anything else I've tried out there. Not perfect, but really good.

Only knock is the stock insole. It degrades fast and is the first thing to go on these shoes. I pop in aftermarket insoles right away and it solves the problem.

I only wear two types of regular socks. Crew socks or a low-cut. That's it.

For ball hockey these go on first. Then the knee sleeve, then the shin guard, then the over-the-calf goes on top of all of that to hold the shin guard in place. I'm not really sure why I started doing it that way, but I think it's weird to have a shin guard sitting on bare leg, and I never quite understood what people do there with no sock under the shin guard.

Side benefit is that the extra layer makes everything a little snugger in the shoe and adds a tiny bit of padding. Not much, but a little. It's just something I've always done and I think it has a few fringe benefits.

These go on last, over the shin guard. I started doing this around the time I switched away from hard plastic shin guards. Plastic shins move around a lot, but they let you slide. The newer fabric-bodied shin guards don't slide much on outdoor deck surfaces anyway, but they tend to spin or shift on the leg a little because of the materials and the strap systems. Pulling a sock over them keeps everything locked in place.

These are soccer socks, not hockey socks, so they don't go all the way up to the knee. They sit mid-shin high, which is exactly enough to hold the guard down and stop it from rotating or falling. Back in the day a shin guard sliding down was a real problem and this fixed it.

Only knock is the heel blows out from all the friction, so I cycle through them faster than I'd like. Still worth it.

I've gone through a couple versions of this bag over the years and they've all held up well. The first thing to go is the shoulder strap padding, which gets messed up over time, but otherwise the bags last.

Size is right. Fits all my gear, shin guards, shoes, everything that's on this list. Side pockets handle extra balls and water bottles. Solid bag all around.

Simple case. I pop the mouthguard in between games and that's it. No throwing it loose in my bag, which would be gross.

I don't use much tape. When I do, it's white.

Most ball hockey players don't tape their sticks at all. It's not ice. You're handling a ball on a textured surface, so you're already getting plenty of friction, and most of the sticks I run have texture on the blade from the factory anyway. Taping the blade actually adds friction underneath that you don't want for stickhandling. Some guys put a couple of strips on the blade for shooting, but I don't bother unless I'm shooting an actual puck with an older stick.

The one place I do use tape is the knob. A small knob at the top with a candy-cane wrap going down a few inches gives me a little grip up there. That's about it.