I have reviewed a bunch of knee guards in the past and finally landed on one of the best overall knee guards in the Bauer Vapor 1X, which I got when I bought a custom set of Bauer 1X pads and gloves. At that time, Bauer was offering amazing accessories to goalies when they bought a set of pads and gear, with the 1S you got a pad bag (which I still use!) and for the 1X I got these knee guards.

The 1X knee guards were SOOOO good that I ended up going through 3 sets of them. On my 3rd and latest set, something has changed and has been causing issues while playing. As seen in the picture on this post, the newest ones constantly land on the outer protective shell. When that happens, you are sacrificing protection since the shell is supposed to be the puck blocker. You are also sacrificing comfort and stability since landing on a curved and hard shell isn’t the best for either of those features.

I also ended up trying the new Bauer Elite knee guards, and the same issue happened even though Bauer made a few design changes. Everything I tried to keep the protective plate in place would result in me landing on the plate itself and the knee guards performing worse than they should… which lead me down a path of buying a bunch of different brands’ knee guards and finding which are over hyped and which are solid performers. Those reviews will be coming soon!

Check out the full video where I dive into what went wrong on the Bauers, how Cam Talbot wears his knee guards incorrectly, and what made the Bauer 1X knee guards so good to begin with.

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