The full equipment list for youth hockey looks alarming the first time you see it written out, and the price tags next to each item make it worse. Before you panic or start buying everything brand new, know this: almost nobody outfits a kid for their first season entirely at retail price, and plenty of hockey parents barely buy anything new at all.
- Check with your local program first, many run an equipment rental system through a membership that unlocks a full set of gear for a lot less than buying it.
- Second-hand sporting goods stores, Play It Again Sports being the big one, are full of barely-used kids’ gear, since kids outgrow it long before it wears out.
- Buy low-end gear for anything that grows with your kid. It’ll be replaced within a season or two either way.
- Two exceptions worth spending on: a brand-new helmet, and a pair of skates that belong to your kid specifically, even if those skates are used.
You might not need to buy much of anything yet
Before you buy a single thing, ask your local youth program whether they run an equipment rental system. A lot of associations do, usually as a benefit tied to your registration or membership, and it works like a lending library for gear: pants, shoulder pads, elbow pads, sometimes even skates, all available for a season at a fraction of retail cost. It’s an easy way to find out whether your kid actually likes hockey before you’ve spent real money finding out.
Second-hand stores are hiding excellent deals
Play It Again Sports is the name you’ll hear most, and for good reason, they specialize in exactly this problem: kids’ sports gear that’s been used for one season and then outgrown while it still has plenty of life left. Check the shells on anything hard, shoulder pads and elbow pads especially, for cracks, but soft padding and straps hold up fine and cost a fraction of new. Local hockey Facebook groups and end-of-season swap events run by your own association are also worth checking, since gear often changes hands directly between parents for less than a store markup.
Fine to buy used
- Shin guards, elbow pads, shoulder pads
- Hockey pants
- Gloves
- Skates, as long as they fit well and the blades can be sharpened
Worth buying new
- Helmet, always, no exceptions
- Mouthguard, for obvious reasons
The helmet rule isn’t negotiable. A helmet’s padding is built to absorb one real impact and then quietly stop protecting as well as it used to, and there’s no way to know what a used helmet has already been through. Buy that one new, every time.
Skates are a little different. They don’t need to be new, a used pair in good shape works fine, but they should be your kid’s own pair rather than whatever the rink hands out at the rental counter. Rental skates get skated on by hundreds of different feet, so the blades are often dull and the boots are broken down in ways that make it harder to balance and turn, exactly the skills a beginner is trying to learn. A properly fitted pair, even a well-cared-for used one, makes those first months of learning to skate noticeably easier.
The full equipment list
Here’s everything your kid will actually wear or carry, roughly in the order it goes on:
- Base layer: a tight compression shirt and either leggings or shorts. Many have a built-in pocket for a cup, and most use velcro tabs near the bottom to hold hockey socks up, doing the job an old-school garter belt used to.
- Cup: worn under the base layer. Ask your program what’s expected at your kid’s age and level.
- Shin guards: cover the shin, knee, and a bit of the lower thigh.
- Hockey socks: long socks worn over the shin guards, usually in the team’s colors, held in place by the base layer’s velcro tabs and sock tape.
- Hockey pants: heavily padded shorts that cover the hips, tailbone, and thighs.
- Shoulder and chest pads: cover the shoulders, chest, upper arms, and upper back.
- Elbow pads.
- Gloves.
- Helmet with a full cage, standard for youth play, and buy this one new.
- Skates, ideally your kid’s own pair.
- Stick, sized to their height. This one’s worth its own guide, see how to choose your kid’s first hockey stick for length, curve, and material.
- Mouthguard, if your kid’s age or level calls for one.
- Water bottle with a long, bent straw, so they can drink through the cage without taking the helmet off.
- Sweater, the jersey, sometimes provided by the team for games, sometimes needed separately for practice.
- Sock tape, for keeping everything where it’s supposed to be.
Nobody gets this fully right the first time
You’ll over-buy one thing and under-buy another, and that’s completely normal. Ask other parents at your first practice what they wish they’d known, most of them are happy to tell you, and half of them are probably trying to unload gear their own kid just outgrew.
Next up: hockey etiquette for fans, wait for the whistle, since you’ll be spending a lot of time in the stands.