Miken Hockey, makers of the Razor Z9 stick, have entered the protective equipment market with their Pro Fit T gloves. Miken was gracious enough to send us a pair of the gloves to review, and you can read our initial impressions below. Keep checking back with us as we will have a more extensive review in the coming weeks.
Specs: Miken Pro Fit T Gloves, Navy Blue, 14 inches
Modifications: None
Appearance and Design: If you’re a fan of the pro style 4-roll gloves, then you’re going to like the way these look. The four rolls on the back of the hand look great and appear quite protective. Moving down to the fingers, we found them to be mobile and move freely due to the 2-piece finger construction. The thumb is strong and very stiff, which has its ups and downs. The stiffness is definitely going to prevent any type of thumb injury, however, you do lose a bit of thumb mobility because of this. We’ll keep an eye on this as we continue to break the gloves in.
It’s nice to see a company take pride in the details, as Miken has done with the Pro Fit T gloves. You’ll notice stitched logos both on the cuff roll and on the thumb, something you don’t see on every glove. The use of a soft, moisture controlling liner is a great feature. Playing on back-to-back nights, I have not had a single issue with my gloves still being cold or wet from the night before.
The Miken Pro Fit T gloves are designed with a fairly mobile cuff. I prefer the short, mobile-type cuffs which really open up to allow maximum wrist movement, and while these don’t fit that bill exactly, they do a good job. They’re designed with a long enough cuff so that your wrist will stay protected from various slashes, but you can still move your wrist and feel comfortable doing so.
Fit and Feel: From someone who typically wears a 13.5″ glove, I was pretty caught off guard when I tried the 14″ Pro Fit T gloves on for the first time and they seemed way too big. We compared our review gloves to 14″ Easton 4-rolls, as well as 14″ Bauer Supreme’s, and found the Miken gloves to be the largest of the group. Due to the size difference, I was nervous wearing them in a game for the first time. However, I have quickly adapted to the size difference, and now the 14″ Miken gloves feel like a great fit.
The Pro Fit T gloves have a great soft feel around your hand and provide ample room for your hand to move around. If you like that style of fit, with a bit of extra space, these gloves will be perfect for you. As I mentioned before, the moisture management liner is really soft on the back of the hand and does its job by drying quickly. At first, the padded liner did seem a bit overwhelming though. In fact, I skated a couple games with the liner pulled outside of the glove due to the thickness. Now that the gloves are a bit more broken in, the liner hasn’t caused any more issues. I skate with the liner in now, and don’t notice any comfort issues whatsoever.
With the Pro Fit T’s nash palm, I have had a very good feel for the stick in my hands, as well as the puck on my blade. Coming from a thick palm on my old gloves, the nash palm required virtually no transition and felt good immediately.
Durability and Protection: With any glove, you have to be aware that palm durability might be an issue. Nash palms are definitely not an exception, even if they are dual layered like we see on the Miken Pro Fit T. Through about five skates now, we have not seen any durability issues with these gloves. Being a right handed shot, the palm on our left glove appears to show much more wear, but it is simply discolored and a bit more worn from the tape on the stick. The rest of the glove is holding up just as well and continues to dry quickly and has yet to pick up that hockey glove smell we all know and love.
The PE Plastic inserts found in the Miken Pro Fit T gloves have provided excellent protection thus far. Basic slashes and hacks encountered through every day game use have been experienced, but have yet to cause any pain or discomfort. As we continue with our review, we’ll take some direct slashes and pucks hits for testing purposes, and keep you updated on whether or not these gloves can handle any punishment.
Overall Impressions: Miken has a well designed and very well constructed glove in the Pro Fit T. Our initial concerns with it being larger than other 14″ gloves quickly went away as we became accustomed to the size. If you think this may be an issue for you, however, be sure to size down accordingly. Beyond that, the only issue that has come up was the thick liner. After a couple skates, this too was a thing of the past. The gloves break in quickly and feel great once they do.
Keep checking back with HockeyWorldBlog.com as we continue our review of the Miken Pro Fit T gloves. If you’re interested in other Miken products, check out our other Miken product reviews. For additional information on Miken, visit their site at MikenHockey.com.
nice looking gloves, not over the top which i like, will try on a pair, hopefully they are as comfy as the reviewer described.