Warrior Alpha Surge Goalie Pads – Big Changes, Big Performance Review

Welcome back to The Hockey Shop Source for Sports. And for once for once, and it's even crazier because it's Warrior in particular, Kevin actually knows more about this product than I do. Right. Well, I mean Yeah. I guess I do.

Yeah. Guess isn't that wild? I know. We got a complete review on this, a complete overview, preview, spend some time with Warrior in Montreal. You're right.

It's at ingoalmag.com where we have gone over and let me tell you. Roll credits. Warrior Alpha Surge has got a lot of new features that we need to get into here. Yes. Where would you like to start, Cam?

I mean, are you gonna be asking me questions now that we got a He's Kevin. A roll reversal? A roll reversal. Yes. Gonna give you I'm gonna give you a little hint for the end.

There's no way I remember the phone number. Oh, so that's gonna be on mute still. Okay. Warrior alpha surge. Let's talk about what's been completely revamped.

Totally. What's been innovated on. Tons. What's why are there now screws attached to my knee? I almost there's so much here.

I almost don't know where to start. So let's let's start with the shape and the stiffness profile, sorta how this pad looks. So flat boot. It's stiff. It's stiff.

It's stiff. Very thin profile.

Correct.

Boot's got some flex, but 90 degree boot. 90 degree boot. The flex is up not much because it's 90 degrees, but it doesn't have the two way flex of the old Warrior system, not to the same degree of the old one. What's that help with? Well, this really helps with post integration.

I haven't had it on the ice myself, but when we were in Montreal, I watched a couple of guys playing it and boy, like, in terms of hitting your post with reverse, that flat boot tends to stick out a little bit. It just makes it super easy to lock into your post. That's what I noticed. Toe bridge, able to throw those laces on ready to rock and roll. Or you go with their bungee system.

Bungee system. There we go. Removable. Yes. Okay.

So, like, in terms of where to start with this one, let's I think we go with the advanced fastening system and the fact that we've seen companies integrate their new stack into their pads so that it's a fixed relationship. So when you hit the ice, you get to the ice faster, everything stays flush and sealed. Well, Warrior is the first company that's also doing it with their calf light. As Cam is velcroing out his, you can see that this is actually fixed much like the knee with there's there's a bracket, a carbon bracket. Actually, I I guess it's it's their carbon pro like, the Bauer has a bracketed system for their cap plate as well.

It's not screwed in. It's not screwed in, though. This is screwed in. It is. Very fixed.

What it does is it gives you a even more balanced sort of secure seal on the ice, and so far, where it is, it slides like a hot dam. So that's the big feature there. There's so much here. I almost don't know what we got the slide of this. This is wow.

So let's put some of these pieces back together. Got that? Slide plate? Yes. We do.

But, I mean, I already have this open. Let's look the strapping system here first. The hammock. The hammock. The Warrior hammock.

So a couple different changes on the inside. We've got this is they call this the hammock and you can see how it will hold rather if you want it wide open, it's adjustable like everything Warrior does. So you can take this strap and move it down to the bottom to make it like a normal strap, or you can keep it in the middle of the pad and almost sort of sits and wraps around your leg and forming like a hammock system for the calf. This seems to continue on their modularity that Warrior has done kind of in the last Again, incredible adjustability, right? So you have it tight.

It's a little bit loose. Knee strap or upper knee strap, sorry. Upper calf strap. Upper calf strap. Double elastic, super thin so it's not gonna get caught up, and, of course, removable.

You can strap it down here. You could I guess, in theory, you could go down there, but it's basically designed to be their version of the professor strap. What I like about that too is that with it being a little bit thinner, that can slide in behind your knee a little bit easier. Start to get caught up. Yeah.

Not just hanging up on the top of your calf and kind of grabbing and pulling the pad up and down. Adjustability on both sides, both in terms of where you want to put this larger area here, but also adjustable on the inside as well, and of course, I love what Warrior did with the g seven. If you're deciding you want to strap your knee down, sometimes, you know, when you put a strap on the bottom, don't have any place to put the Velcro. They put the extra Velcro on the back of the strap so you can attach it down here wherever you want. Just again, maintaining that flexibility to do this pad up a lot of different ways.

There's so much I'm, like, running out of like, I miss, like,

on You're

keeping so much. So much. Now let's talk about the knee specifically. So continuing on with what we were just gabbing on about I'm not used to having Cam Lee. System.

I know. It's crazy. I know. It's throwing me all off. So when we open up that new cradle A lot of Velcro today.

We do see the screws in it. Well, that again, that's their advanced fastening system. That is wild. That is it's fixed. It's fixed.

It's fixed. Now what you may have noticed is also adjustable like look at the adjustability in terms of where you want to put your knee strap. You want to run it down on the inside? No problem. Run it down on the inside so again it kind of goes behind your knee.

Want to run it to the outside through the middle? No problem. Just move it here. Wrap it around there. Now here's here's this is is a new feature.

Now, of course, slide plate removable. If it's too much, this this pad slides even without it remarkably well because it again, because of the fixed system, because of how hard this inside edge is, because changing this with the advanced fastening system look at how thin it is. Like, this is half as thick as a g seven. So the amount there's no binding anywhere. The amount of material that's on the ice is like, it's negligible compared to previous pads.

So it's gonna slide like crazy with or without the slide plate. Now last one, Cam. Because I'm like, I'm I'm like we're almost there. Notice how that came out? I did.

You did notice So how that came goes back in. No problem. Well, I would hope so. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Wanna thicken it up? Want a little Taller? A little taller knee stack. Put your hips up higher in your butterfly, anatomically put your off in a position that's putting less stress on your hips and your knees. They are gonna sell?

You will have it in store when it launches. Thicker versions of this. We've seen it in the past where you have to go to secondary markets. People build it up. We know the benefits.

The higher your knee is compared to the ice, the wider your butterfly get, the less strain on your knees, your hips, and your ankles. So because of the modularity of this, Warrior decided wisely, I believe, especially for young kids, like, wanna take the pressure off as your kid's growing up, you can have a thicker butterfly. You can have a thicker knee stack to take the pressure off in your butterfly. It makes you taller in your butt too. It's replaceable, but you can also have it beefed up and I'm pretty sure that they've even I saw it.

We had it in in our in our review that it actually overlaps here so that it creates a nice flush area all the way out to the edge of this more rounded knee stack as opposed to just having it in here. It actually continues out here sort of keeping it level as you raise it. So an exciting feature for young goalies. I think we've talked to people in the goalie training industry for years about the idea that, hey, if we take some of that stress off their joints when they're younger doing the butterfly by raising this butterfly stack and then you can gradually bring it down as they get older and ultimately to get to the NHL, you've got a fixed maximum thickness that you're allowed. Mhmm.

I've heard it suggested maybe for NHL goalies practicing, take some dress off the 200 times you dropped to the ice in practice by raising it up. There's a lot of different applications. First company to it, really excited to see where this goes, where you as goalies take it. Well, dope. It's a lot.

Yeah. You haven't We haven't even gotten to the the gloves. Yeah. No. We're to we're gonna have to separate these two videos.

So stay tuned for another video. We'll talk about the different gloves and what options are there. But thank you, Kevin, for walking us You still have to give the number because I'm your search pad. So if you can let us know where to reach out back to us at the number. Well, I mean, the only number I know off the top of my head, because we're so close and such good friends, Cam, is your personal cell.

Would you like me to get back? (604) 589-8299 or 1805677790. Give us a call. We can talk about it. You can order your custom pads pad a.

Oh, that's right. Yes. These aren't available at retail yet even though you have these, but you can custom order these through Cam. I forgot about that. Give us a call.

We can talk about it. You're pretty good at this. I hey. It's me. You're better in this role than I was in your role.

I don't know what that means. What does that mean? So I'm the only one that's gotten to see these, Hutch, in person because I you you you were busy.

So I'm the only one that's gotten to see these, Hutch, in person because I you you you were busy.

I was there, Woody. I filmed that one.

Oh, right. I was thinking, like, the the originals, like, the trip to Montreal with Yeah. Of the sure. So what'd you think when you saw him for for in person? Like, I was all excited after the trip to Montreal because they are so unique.

You got to see them in person at the Hockey Shop. So unique. Okay. Unique on its own does not require Sorry.

Just love doing my apologies.

I'm a little hyperbolic. Hyperbolic? You know, funny thing

is, I was more excited editing the video than I was on the day. And and maybe that's just because my head is somewhere else when we're recording these segments and I'm just praying everything is going to go well or whatever it might be.

Well, not to mention you've been up since four in the morning to catch a ferry to come up with the

That's actually true. Every time, every time you watch a gear segment, there's a very tired guy behind the camera. But today actually, as we were editing the video, looking at it, I got that little surge of, oh, I'd really like to get in the ice. That little surge,

And that's quite nice.

I didn't even

mean it. I like to pun and I didn't do that one on purpose. But yeah, it really got those sort of excited feelings looking at the changes, looking at the details, wanting to just get out there and know what they felt like. It's been a while since I've played, so it's interesting that a product would bring those feelings to me today.

I think for me, the most exciting part, and we've got a set coming here shortly, I saw them, the goalie content creator game in Dallas. You saw a lot of the goalies wearing the new Alpha Search pad and enjoyed watching some of the highlights from that and sort of getting some of their early feedback. We haven't had a chance to be on the ice in it yet. We've obviously have seen it since, like, last December. We did a pretty big deep dive on it.

Like I said, make sure you go check that out at ingoalmag.com, but I haven't been on the ice yet. And the thing that I want to try most is the different strapping options. Yeah. I wanna feel how it slides, with and without the slide plate because I think these things are so thin on that inner edge the way they've cleaned up sort of that calf area that they're gonna slide like a hot damn regardless, and that's the feedback we've gotten from other people that have been on the ice in them. But I wanna try all the unique strapping, like the calf hammock with six different points of adjustments.

Love You get on

the ice with any goaltender who asks you a question and you are on your hands and knees adjusting their strapping. Nobody knows strapping like Woody, honestly.

Because it it it changes and and it depends on the brand, but it changes how it feels and it changes how it plays, how it reacts to your leg. And I think there's some diversity that we played with in the g seven line for a relatively straight more straighter, definitely stiffer profile pad. You know, you just you think of those as always being worn loose, and there's an ability to dial that in a little bit on this. So I'm excited. I'm excited to get our set on the ice and and try and tinker with some of those very unique, very new strapping options.

K. Let's do something else that's very unique. We'll go off script here a little bit.

Uh-oh. Very unique or just unique?

I did that because you said that. I know. Know. Could you give me Woody's top two or three things to look for as you are tinkering with your strapping regardless of brand and how that might affect how the pads sit on you or play for you? What are you looking for when you're helping someone?

Oh, that's a good question. I've never thought of it in those terms. It's usually somebody asking a specific question.

Very specific. Jeremy, but there you go.

Not to toot my own horn, but I am proud of the fact that though that includes right up to the National Hockey League level with guys being like, this feels like this or this isn't sealing that. And it's like, no. You just gotta loosen off that strap and look at how much better it seals. To me, the biggest things are how your skate interacts with the boot and that and we talk about toe laces and toe ties and different things there, as and and how that integrates with the shin area. That's to me the the biggest connection point.

Explain that.

The knee can't be too tight or it just won't rotate at all anyways. Like, you can't crank it down super tight like they used to. The tighter the shin, you know, and it and again, it depends on brands because they've changed so much, and that's what I'm excited to see with this new Alpha Surge because it's also unique. Typically, the the tighter you crank in in the shin, sort of the less that pad moves around your leg, the more it moves with it. And sort of that interaction and where everybody's comfortable with the feel of connection versus the snappiness of a rotation.

How quickly does it get to seal and stay flat on the ice? And then does it come back square to your leg as you get back up? I think through the various options through the through different shin straps, you can tinker and change that quite a bit, and everybody has different preferences. I think we all want the pad to sit flat, and we'd all like it to come back to relatively square when we get back up. But there's different degrees of that and everybody's comfortable with a different level.

And how you tinker with the straps, especially around the top of the calf, affects that greatly. Does that make sense?

I think it makes sense.

Think so many different ways. Yeah. Like like because they're all like, everybody's gotta you know, I've never been in the true FRS. Heard good things about that strap. It might be one of the one of their better innovations to date since they they, you know, started building their they went the split and started with True.

But I haven't had a chance to try it and and feel that myself. Every company almost now has a slightly unique take on calf strapping, whether it goes across the back of the calf or over the top of it. I think companies are are going away from what we've thought of as a traditional professor step. They have their version, but it's not sitting the way it originally did for and on Ben Scribbins. So there's just so much variety within that in terms of a, how it performs, which is to me the most important, but b, how it feels in in relation to that performance because some guys just don't wanna feel that pad snug.

So you just have to play with it.

Which is what I do. Mhmm. And what everybody does. Right? Like, it's not special.

It's just I think the only difference would be being able to recognize how a certain strap might create over rotation or a lack of rotation or all these different things.

Okay. Let let me ask you differently then. In most cases, when you've helped a guy, were you able to get to a place that they were more comfortable with? Which is to say, can most things be fixed by playing with the strapping? Or are there some cases where it's just not that's not the pad for you.

We gotta do something different.

I do think most things can be fixed to an extent by strapping in terms of performance. The question is whether you're comfortable with the feel. Like pads that are on too tight and don't rotate, like the answers to loosen them up, but are you comfortable with it being that loose? And that's an overgeneralization. Again, it depends on the pads.

I mean, I remember getting on the ice with Eddie Lack and his ankles were killing him. And it's just like, why do you have a bootstrap on? And I'm I'll never forget him saying is that the bootstraps my bootstrap's so loose, it doesn't do anything. And then I'm literally I'm like, okay. Get in a butterfly.

And you there was a ton of tension. I mean, yeah, it felt loose when he's standing up. But when he got in a butterfly, there was tension on the bootstrap that caused tension on his ankles. And this was at a time when most people had bootstraps, and Carey Price was sort of one of the first to remove it. Eddie removed his and never looked back and never and never had the same type of ankle pain.

And this is going back a long ways. But, you know, similarly, like, we've seen companies that had problems with their pads not sealing at intersection of the shin and the boot and different options for how they do it up and the introduction of different pillows and padding that improve that. Like, we've we've had these conversations over the years. I I do think the pads have changed so much in terms of that relationship between the knee and the face of the pad, and the fixed relationships has improved that seal and allowed you to have more variation in your strapping without sacrificing it. I think the pads that have more give in the knee are more likely to have over and under rotation issues from what I've seen that require strapping to sort of be counterbalanced to it.

So as you get into your Bauers and then the way CCM has built their knee stack and and obviously with these Warriors one, that seal, as long as the knees on their flush, that seal should be there. Now it's more about how does the pad move when you get back up to your feet and does it sit in a way that's comfortable for you as you're moving around and you feel like it's facing the shooter as opposed to being twisted on your leg.

And I think you made the point that sometimes you can get somebody to a point where it is working better for them, but now maybe they're not so comfortable. Little tougher when you're a beer leaguer who only gets out on the ice once a week and it's a game and it matters to you to win or lose. But if you've got practice time, you can discover that spot that works better. Maybe you're not as comfortable, so now back it off and then sort of one week to the next, you can start moving towards something that you know is more functional and you will get used to it. But you have to, you have to try.

Or carpet flies, baby.

Yeah. But we know they're not the same. Right?

Well, not the same. But if you put on your as long as you put on your skates and your that's, you know, like Cam always talks about at The Hockey Shop about fitting pads, you know, and he wants you in your skates, which makes a ton of sense. But then he also wants you in your knee pad pant connection if he can Mhmm. Because that all affects how the pad sits. You know, how it rotates, how it moves around your leg, like having it similar.

So if you I I think you can accomplish a certain amount of it For sure. Carpet flies. Like like, if we had been in my basement instead of on the ice in Richmond with Eddie, we would have seen that tension in the ankle strap that he didn't think existed just by dropping into the butterfly, you know, in on the carpet versus the ice. But you're right. You can tinker.

Have fun, folks. Send us feedback.

Here you go. What are your tips?

Yeah. How do you do it? How do you get comfortable in a new setup? Where where do they send that feedback, Hutch? I need the I need to see if the voice still works.

So many places. Today, we'll go for podcast at ingoalmag.com.

The man could barely breathe, but coughing for the past two weeks, and now he's thrown out like the dark side radio voice. I love it. I love it. Okay. We're off and running.

We've got our gear segment. Next up, how about a little ProReads? ProReads. Little ProReads this week. Little Jet Greaves.