Knee/Thigh Guards

[mickz 107]

Just curious, how many of you guys are wearing knee pads opposed to the stock thigh wraps that come with most pads?

I'm still pretty new to playing goal but I am interested in picking up a pair. I am debating between the Vaughn V3 7700 and the ones from Don Simmons.

For those of you wearing knee pads, what model(s) have you tried and what did you like/not like about them?

[Law Goalie 147]

I'm in the process of improving my knee-protection, which has been a little off ever since I moved to CCM 620 pants, so this is very much on my mind at the moment.

Knee-pads are an across-the-board improvement on anything that laces into the back of the pad. The reason is pretty simple: anything that is laced into the back of the pad and strapped to your leg is going to resist the rotation of the pad, unless you wear it so loosely that it could flap in the breeze -- and that's leaving aside the possibility of it getting caught in your pants.

There are four basic things you want a knee-pad to do:

1) adequately protect your knee and lower thigh from puck impacts, 'underlapping' the thigh of your pants;

2) integrate seamlessly with your pants and pads, neither catching on the pants nor jamming in the knee of the pads (which can often can rotation issues);

3) stay in place on your leg, especially with respect to the patella;

4) provide a little extra cushion in butterflying, and a little extra height off the knee-block/stack.

The best knee-pads I've ever found are Brown's. He makes two models: what's currently called the 2100 with an annoying cheater-bar on the inside of the thigh that does nothing but trip you up, and the plain vanilla 2000: the best thing money can buy. The whole knee-pad acts like a giant shock-absorber: a 3/4" layer of soft Volara 'comfort foam' against the leg, 1/4" of LD45 glued to 1/16" HDPE that forms the main body, with Brown's special secret, a 1/16" layer of wool felt on top of the plastic. Despite superior protection, they are also surprisingly low-profile. Flexibility at the joint is excellent; the shape of the plastic almost completely prevents them from falling down the leg. The landing area (the part that's going to hit the knee-block/knee-stack of your pads) is very slightly curved, offering a generous surface to mediate your weight and the knee area of the pad. Not cheap, but not much less than most other high-end knee-pads: generally $100-$120. The *only* drawback, and it's a purely secondary one, is that because Brown's are a one-piece design, they don't have a floating shield on the sides of the knee, which means that when you're hugging the post or in a split-knee position, you can get a puck in a partially unprotected area, though rarely with any force, since guys don't tend to wire it at your knees from behind the goal-line or below the circles. The only wear you'll experience will be some fraying around the edges, and possibly a shift in the soft Volara foam, which can come unglued; it's an easy operation to take the top binding off, glue it back down, and play for a few more years. Only two velcro elastic straps (relatively inelastic, in fact), set above and below the knee. Brilliant, brilliant design, but difficult to mass-produce because of the large solid piece of plastic forming the main body, and some very tricky sewing around it.

The next best, IME, is probably the Reebok Premier 2 Pro, which you can always spot because of its garter-belt design:

These are very protective, stay up extremely well, and offer lots of adjustability; you can change the height and position of just about anything. You can also see on the sides of the knee-joint those extra plastic-reinforced flaps covering the gap I mentioned in the Brown's. These are, however, just about the bulkiest knee-pads you can buy. While the flexibility at the joint is decent, the sheer amount of surface area and the number of parts (as opposed to the one-piece design of the Brown's) tend to make mobility a problem. They're also significantly heavier than the Brown's, or anything else, though the garter-elt does shift some of that weight onto the waist and off the knee. Personally, I hate having an extra belt around my waist - for most people, this plus a jock plus the pants would make *three*. The consensus on these is that while they're extremely protective, they take a good deal of getting used-to, unless you've been wearing even clunkier, less protective and less comfortable knee-pads, like, for instance...

The older Koho 590 and RBK/Reebok Premier designs by Michel Lefebvre, featuring the notorious hard plastic ball over the knee-cap. For a small number of goalies, these were heaven; most others were subject to bruised, battered, and occasionally *cut* knees from the edges of that plastic cap. The basic design is three pieces, each with a velcro elastic strap: the hard cap, with grossly inadequate padding behind it (especially at the lower edge), which is suspended by three short elastic strips from the upper thigh-pad, a long, curved piece of moulded plastic backed with a D-shaped extension at its lower edge, a good amount of low-density foam; in front of these two floats a low-thigh pad, an even longer long, curved piece of plastic with a *tiny* amount of low-density foam on the rear (maybe 1/16") and a small trapezoid of low-density foam front and centre. All of this is wrapped in gray 400D nylon on the front, and a synthetic sude in the back.

There is also an Itech (now Bauer) clone of this design, which is significantly lighter, and uses a nice breathable orange Ait-Knit material on the back and a tighter black polyester mesh in the front, but has a smaller piece of plastic in the upper thigh (doesn't extend all the way across) and had some additional durability issues with the outer shell: the middle plastic shield tended to chew through the bottom edge below the LD foam trapezoid in a somewhat more rapid and ugly manne rthan on the original Koho/RBK design, as seen here:

In this first picture on the left, you can really see the potential problem (for some wearers) with this design. By sewing the liner (orange) through the padding to the very edge of the plastic cap, the designers created a seam of minimal padding (compressed down) that rapidly decreases as the foam separates on either side of the stitching, *right where padding is needed most, at the edge of the plastic.* As a result, fi your knee doesn't fit absolutely perfectly, you'll smash the hell out of it on that bottom edge, which is precisely what bruised and cut people so consistently.

In 2007, Reebok substantially upgraded this design (largely because of the enormous number of complaints about bruised knee-caps) with grip-print material all over the back, low-density foam all over the plastic to prevent the kind of wear seen above, and a fourth part added below the knee: a small knee-sling with a little padded flap and a fourth strap to help keep the plastic cap centred on the patella. These changes made the design wearable for a MUCH wider range of goalies, and more comfortable, durable and protective for all. They also added a large, floating moulded plastic shield over the middle and upper thigh pieces, velcroed on, which most people removed because of minimal added protection and very annoying clattering noises every time they moved. However, by also making the entire knee-pad about 25% wider, both extending the plastic thigh pieces and flaring them out (beyond the contour of the leg) behind that huge plastic shield, this 2007 version had some integration problems with a good number of pants and pads, so that's something to watch out for. (For more, see Paul 'Gasman' Gastaldin's superb review from Duke's Source for Sports in 2007, which has tons of pictures.) Note that there are some Reebok-branded ones that are *not* the upgraded 2007 version, but not many: the fourth strap on the knee-sling and the grip-print are the main points to look out for. Here's a good product shot, cribbed from PHL, showing the plastic shield and the knee-sling from the front, with Gasman's shot of the grip-print at right, with the top of the knee-sling visible at the bottom of the frame, and you can also see the way the knee-cap is suspended from the upper piece, and the middle piece sewn into the upper at the outside corners:

There is also a $700 Swiss upgrade on this design that takes the basic knee-pad and re-builds all the external plastic (knee-cap and frontal floating thigh piece) with carbon composites: they were originally made for Hiller, and have been worn by Gustavsson, Giguere, Reimer, and pretty well anyone who works with the Allaire brothers and can charge it through a team's incredulous EQM. (Please note that these do not actually cost $700, but after an already high price, shipping, and duty, it ain't far off.) These are, to my knowledge, an aftermarket creation: they take a pair of retail pads and mod them, rather than building from scratch, which is why the Hiller ones are their website are clearly the original Koho/RBK model rather than the upgraded 2007 model.

Vaughn has two designs, the Velocity (which is variously called the 7450 and the 7700) and the Epic 8800; the Simmons 'Ultimate' knee-pads are (naturally) a copy of the Velocity design with the dubious improvement of Nash synthetic suede lining the knee area. The Velocity design is basically a simplified, streamlined, less-problematic version of the original Lefebvre Koho/RBK design: it's three pieces, with the middle and bottom suspended from the top thigh piece, each with a velcro elastic strap. The differences are that the Vaughn design is much more curved, having a narrower profile as a result, and uses a more square knee-cap design with much better padding rather than the rounded RBK plastic ball and its horrible padding (which is still not great on the 2007 redesign, IMO, since I still can't wear the damn things).

There is also an upgraded Velocity '7900 Double' design which appears to have a fourth piece, a large floating shield like the ones Chris Piku mods onto knee-pads for some pros and his students. I haven't actually seen these in the flesh, so my guess is that it's a fourth piece; it could also be a larger replacement for the middle piece in the original design that floats further in front. The Epic knee-pads are... not a good design. They don't really work at all, and I don't know anyone who likes or wears them who has had any experience with better knee-pads.

Pete Smith had a crack at making a relatively square design that he sold with his 6000-series pads; some people loved them, but he wasn't thrilled with the results:

Warrior has not, to my knowledge, carried the design over, but you *can* see a Warrior-branded knee-pad in the InGoal magazine video review of the Smith-designed Ritual pads. Whether this is a prototype, or whether they just slapped a sticker over another company's logo is anyone's guess, but they look to me to be quite similar to the gartered Reebok Premier 2's.

There is also a new "Revoke Pro" Reebok design with a large white plastic cap over the knee, significantly wider and higher-volume than their previous plastic caps. Note the large 'doughnought' ('donut' to some) hole in the middle for the knee-cap to sit down into, complete with a little Ultima Dry in the middle for extra grip:

I don't have any experience with this, buy there are a good number of pro goalies who seem to like it, and a number of favourable reviews. My concern with the design is that it offers no support below the knee - just a wide strap - and relatively short thigh protection, being (if you look closely) only the middle of the two thigh pieces from the original Koho/RBK design.

There are also a number of pants that have integrated knee-pads, but the OP's question was specifically about standalone ones.

Personally, I'm in the process of adding the top two piece from a pair of Itech's on top of my Brown's, mainly just so that they'll integrate better with my CCM 620 pants and not pop out from under them. This is, however, a problem with the 620 pants rather than the knee-pads, since the 620s have a very curved, VERY narrow thigh opening -- too narrow for my leg, in fact, until I slit them up the back (stupid enormous hamstrings...). As a result, any knee-pad will slip out the bottom as you bend your knee, then jam on the underside of the thigh as you straighten your leg. The only real solution is to widen the leg of the pants and have a knee-pad that extended far enough up inside that it can't pop out, which also guarantees no gaps in protection. I'll post that when I'm done with it...

[Axxion89 32]

I have these and love them. Taken slap shots off the thigh and knee with no or very little pain. Only thing I don't like about them are the elastic straps don't really hold onto your leg very tight, so I tape them like they are shin pads and its works perfect. I would never play without knee pads ever again, they are great

[Law Goalie 147]

Out of curiosity, did you leave the exterior plastic plate on, or take it off? (I'm assuming you have the 2007 version.)

[Axxion89 32]

Out of curiosity, did you leave the exterior plastic plate on, or take it off? (I'm assuming you have the 2007 version.)

I bought them used from the Springfield Falcons AHL team so it did not come with it. If it did, I would have taken it off anyway, looks like overkill to me and these offer plenty of armor without it. I bought another pair on ebay identical without the plastic and to this day have yet to see someone with one with the plastic on.

[Law Goalie 147]

Nor have I, and I agree that they're excessive, not to mention annoying. I love the thigh protection on that design, which is why I'm stealing it and adding it to my Brown's, I just can't work with the Koho/RBK/Reebok/Itech/Bauer knee. Funny, though, how this design has migrated between companies; even Vaughn merely altered the knee and curved it a little more.

[Justin Liedloff 13]

Thigh boards FTW!

[mickz 107]

Law Goalie - Thanks for the in depth analysis of the options available. I ended up going with the Premier 2 with the garter.

[Law Goalie 147]

Glad to hear it. Definitely throw up a review, if you have a few minutes. Annoyingly, Duke's has just changed their website, and now all the images from the review I linked are dead.

[Phantom 19]

PAW knee pads are some of the best out there. Sara is awesome to deal with and do them up custom for you:

http://www.protectiveathleticwear.com/kneepadsmain.htm

[phonak 0]

I'm going to borrow this thread a little. I just started playing goalie and my knees take a beating every time I play since I tend to drop harder on my knees than I should. My knee lands in the center of the knee stack, but I always end up with bruises on the inside of my knee where the bottom of my knee cap end.

So is there any knee pad that offers a little more protection for the inside of the knee/"landing area?"I don't really care for any other protection.

[Law Goalie 147]

Definitely. While knee-pads are very helpful in protecting against pucks, there are also extra cushioning for the knee-drive AND give you a little extra height in the butterfly, which takes addition strain off the ankles, tibial tendons, knees, and hips.

The Brown's will give you the best protection in that respect, since they effectively spread the impact of your knee across a wider area of the stack, cushioned by additional and successive foams. If you compare the Brown and Smith designs, you can see how both offer substantial support below the knee (though the Smith ones are no longer available). The Reebok Premier 2 (aka P2) would also offer some protection in this respect, though not as much as Browns.

The Koho/RBK P1/Itech/Bauer Pro design is a disaster in this area, for almost everyone except those whose knee-caps fit perfectly into the socket: that seam I mentioned actually makes knee landings significantly worse for most. Imagine the pain you have now, increased by a sharp, abrasive edge right where it hurts. That said, definitely try them in a shop: they work like magic for a significant minority.

[Law Goalie 147]

Small update: I decided to grab a quick shot of the Warrior knee-pads from the InGoal Ritual pad review, in case anyone knows anything more about them, and just for comparison.

On closer inspection, they appear to be a hybrid: they're laced into the back of the pad (you can see the overlapping yellow and white PU leather tabs, and a little of the lacing), but they're distinctly a two- or three-piece knee-pad design, with the knee-cap held to the upper pad with elastic straps, much like the Lefebvre/Reebok designs. What I'm not crazy about is that you can clearly see the inside of the goalie's knee exposed (more on the left knee, right of frame) and that there seems to be a visible gap between the upper padding and the knee-cap (again, more visible on the left knee). This picture also shows the inevitable forces involved in attaching something to the knee and then lacing it into the back of the pad: when the pad rotates, the knee-pad twists away from the back of the pad.

[forbs02 20]

Thanks for posting this review. I currently have a goalie who has chicken legs and I am having a hard time finding something for her that will stay in place. I have her in the Bauer knee guards that I laced into a garter belt, but I just don't know if it will work. I will be checking out the Browns and see if I can track a pair down.

[Law Goalie 147]

I'm glad to hear it was useful.

Is she using the three-piece ones I mentioned above or the older 'KPX' design that Biron uses?

Brown's straps by default are relatively long, but it is of course exceedingly easy to shift the velcro and shorten them up. Being one solid piece, they don't shift much, but they also flex perfectly. If all else fails, you can buy them direct from John; just give him a call.

[TheWay 0]

Alright, sensing that my hd foam knee pads that I was using were less than ideal I went and bought the ITech model.

The previous pads, of which Lawgoalie can elaborate on, were good for impact but were prone to moving, one game the one on the left migrated right down to my ankle.

Onto the ITechs, as promised the solid knee cup is an atrocious idea. Luckily, I mostly need them as thigh guards for now but wouldn't mind upgrading the protection to something more effective.

SO far I've cut the plastic knee cup out of the kneepads and want to replace it with something more comfortable but still protective.

My initial research suggests that a seperate knee pad would do this. I'm thinking something like this http://www.eastbay.com/product/model:134143/sku:027446?green=04003f68-a13a-4097-afbe-0f5a9b7fd72c&cm=CrossSellMB#sku=027446&size=XXL

Though not easier to put on I think it might be the best solution. Any other ideas?

Alternatively, I may try to sew something new into the actual knee cup of the ITechs. What would the best material be for this maneuver?

[Axxion89 32]

As a need pad user, I have yet to get hit dead center in the knee cap. Lowest hits come right above kneecap when your knee is bent. I think you would be fine with that separate knee pad as IMO it would protect the small gap a thigh guard would leave between your knee and cushions impact when going down. I am debating going this route to decrease bulkiness with my Reebok knee pads but I enjoy the extra height that the thick plastic cap provides. For the most part, if you can butterfly enough where the thigh rise can block your knees (a moderate V shaped butterfly should suffice), then you should rarely get hit in the knee area and only really need stronger protection in the thighs.

[Law Goalie 147]

The real problem with the Itech knee-pad is the bottom edge of that plastic knee-cap: it's a sharp edge of plastic topped with a seam of heavy stitching, right against the skin with almost no padding. If you removed the plastic cap, cut off the offending portion (that is, whatever your knee would actually land on in driving your knees to the ice), sanded it down and and drilled or punched a new line of holes in the plastic sewed it back on, you'd remove 90% of the problem.

If you're looking for a readily available foam to bulk up any padding, I highly recommend yoga mat foam: it's EVA, relatively dimensionally stable, biologically inert, just tacky enough that it's easy to layer and sew fabrics around it. For $10 per cheap one (Zellers, etc.) they're not a bad deal either. Your best bet is just to open up the binding on the knee-cap padding (once it's off the plastic), pull out the existing padding, cut a piece of yoga mat roughly the same size, then sandwich them both back inside the fabric and sew it all up again.

If you can get rid of that bottom edge of the plastic and add a little more padding, those should be great. I just gave up and hacked the upper two pieces onto my Brown's. A separate knee-pad like the ones you linked to, worn underneath, could certainly work as well.

It might actually be easier in the short-term to sew wider, heavier, less elastic straps onto the old knee-pads; the flaw with that old design, which became the Bauer KPX, is that all the elasticity does is let the knee-pad shift and fall: the pad itself bends at the joint, so you don't need elastic straps.

[Axxion89 32]

If you are looking for EVA Foam, here is a link to the supplier I use:

http://www.mcmaster.com/#eva-foam/=fy7qbp

I figured this would help and they have great customer service

[woody31 1]

Where can I purchase this majestic product? I can't locate them anywhere

[Law Goalie 147]

If you are looking for EVA Foam, here is a link to the supplier I use:

http://www.mcmaster....va-foam/=fy7qbp

I figured this would help and they have great customer service

They are, but I don't think they ship to Canada any more, and TheWay's up here too.

Where can I purchase this majestic product? I can't locate them anywhere

Hehe... image not found.

Seriously, though, those should be pretty widely available. There are a bunch of them through Google Shopping alone: Goaliemonkey, etc.

[woody31 1]

They are, but I don't think they ship to Canada any more, and TheWay's up here too.

Hehe... image not found.

Seriously, though, those should be pretty widely available. There are a bunch of them through Google Shopping alone: Goaliemonkey, etc.

See I've tried that but they're all the ones without the black cap and extra strap, which is what I'm specifically looking for

[Axxion89 32]

See I've tried that but they're all the ones without the black cap and extra strap, which is what I'm specifically looking for

I have both with the 4 and 3 strap system and I prefer the 3 straps better than 4, I don't any extra benefit from the 4th. I also tape my knee pads to my legs over my hockey socks so in reality, I don't even use the straps

[Law Goalie 147]

See I've tried that but they're all the ones without the black cap and extra strap, which is what I'm specifically looking for

That's really weird: I could have sworn they were all the later revision, just minus the floating plastic plate on the thigh. Reebok stopped issuing those pretty quickly, and most shops just took them off; they were utterly useless, creating a lot of extr anoise and bulk for basically zero increase in protection. The ones on the market now should all have the grip material in the knee and the extra lower strap, unless Reebok decided to re-issue the old ones instead.

[woody31 1]

This is what they have on the site that I've been buying from for almost all of my gear, and there's no extra strap on the knee which is what I personally am looking for. This may also sound weird, but I personally want the Black plastic cap too, If anybody has them and is willing to part with them because I wish to integrate them with these which some may find crazy because from what I've read nobody has a preference to the plastic floater, but I'm different like that. For the record, I prefer these Bauers with the plastic cap over their full foam model along other companies non plastic cap models as I personally find the knee comfortable when positioned correctly. I just want the plastic floaters as a replacement to my thigh boards (yes I wear knee pads and thigh boards) for protection against those harder shots. I had tried just taking off the thigh boards of my pads but I was struck by the slapshot of a CHL level player during a camp run by the Goalie coach of the Saint John Seadogs (but that beside the point. When I was hit there straight on, it was a stinger and I just put the boards back on and haven't looked back until seeing these late model Reebok knee pads. So to make a long story with a lack of paragraphing short, It would benefit greatly if I were pointed in the direction of somewhere or someone who has these plastic floaters. Thanks for your time