GEAR REVIEW

McKENNEY’S XPG2 LINE GIVES ALL THE BENEFITS WITHOUT THE PREMIUM PRICE

IN AN INDUSTRY dominated by a handful of large companies whose primary focuses lie in retail and NHL market share, McKenney goalie equipment – part of the Roustan Hockey umbrella – is taking a different tack. The McKenney brand strays from the beaten path by eschewing overseas mass production in favor of domestically produced, customized products. McKenney’s goal is to create equipment for goalies as unique as the company. Everything McKenney builds is made in Canada and produced at pro spec. In other words, McKenney doesn’t produce any recreation-level equipment. The new McKenney XPG2 lineup blends 30 years of the company’s craftsmanship with the needs of modern goalies. Starting with the LEG PADS, the XPG2 adopts various design concepts specifically catered to meet what today’s net guardians need to stop pucks. The pads remove knee rolls – required in the early days to maintain the pad’s width – and feature an angled outer roll (as opposed to the traditional squared shape) to help angle pucks toward the pad’s face. Gone, too, are skate-lace toe ties. Instead, the XPG2 line features an exclusive “LockLace” bungee toe-tie system, which makes the pad responsive to the goalie’s movements without putting excessive pressure on their ankles and knees. The leg-strapping system is intuitive, highlighted by their updated “Precision Fit Strapping” system, which anchors the pad to the goalie’s calf. This is an ideal connection point because it is high enough on the leg for the pad to be responsive to the goalie’s movements but is still below the knee, which allows for easy rotation. To make the pads stand up better to the demands goalies put on them, McKenney installs grey Nash in the “Motion Response Channel” along with a high-quality dual high-density form core. Those additions keep the pad’s shape – and have the added benefit of making the equipment featherlight (four pounds, four ounces in a 34+1-inch pad). The overall structure of the pad is available in two configurations. The “Core Flex LTE” is for goalies who want more flex above and below the knee, while the “Core Fly LTE” is for goalies who favor a stiffer profile. Most other pad specs, from strapping to toe-tie configuration, can also be customized. The possibilities explode when one considers the 19 different color zones and four different logo-color options. For the XPG2 CATCH GLOVE, McKenney went with an all-new construction, moving to a one-piece thumb (for max coverage), floating-cuff design (for max wrist mobility) and SureGrip palm design (for max control). The glove is built with a 60-degree closure, the most popular angle used by NHL goalies, and comes with a double-T pock