CCM has for a while now offered solid retail glove offerings that have always been easy for me to recommend even though they aren’t quite up to their pro stock offerings. The previous iteration of the Jetspeed glove (the FT6 Pro) had some solid upgrade with the introduction of AER-TEC to allow for more airflow through their gloves that helps cool your hands and allows athletes to perform at their peak for longer. I reviewed them very positively previously here.

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So one would assume CCM has continued down the line of solid retail glove offerings with the Jetspeed FT8 Pro gloves. When I first took a look at them through their catalogue they seemed extremely similar to the previous generation FT6 Pro while having some slight backhand foam design changes and an upgraded 3 piece middle finger design. I could tell by chatter online that the new mono-colourways and the coloured palms were having a very appealing affect on people, so I knew I had to grab a pair from a local retailer to take a look for myself.

While CCM has previously sent me gloves in the past with the FT6 Pro line, I was so interested and impressed by the Tacks AS-V Pro I bought those myself to review and take a look at.

When you look at the CCM FT8 Pro gloves one immediate change should make possible buyers think twice, because it is the same change that has lead Bauer down the route of cheaper and lower quality gloves… which is the plastic glued on logos instead of the pro inspired embroidery that previous models and their pro stock gloves have. This could save some weight, but embroidery does actually take longer manufacturing time to embroider all the material for the cuff rolls. The only gloves with glued on plastic cuff logos that were still recommendable were the Sherwood Encrypt 1 gloves from Hockey Stick Man which I reviewed here.

Watch the full review on YouTube below to see what other cost savings CCM has used to deliver a worse quality hockey glove while charging $30 (Canadian) more!

CCM did upgrade at least one part of the Jetspeed FT8 Pro gloves, which is the welcome addition to the 3 piece middle finger. While this is a nice upgrade, I should make it clear that CCM has offered this 3 piece design on the index and middle finger before over a decade ago when the Reebok 11K gloves… so it is nice that this feature is back but is it really worth an overall worse glove for a slight improvement on finger protection? I know people are going to love the mono-colour look and the palms that match the gloves (something we have seen before with STX and Bauer, but have since been taken away as retail options). When testing the palm compared to the FT6 Pro the materials feel the same when you REALLY look at it and the new sprayed on graphic that looks to be mimicking digital palms at the bottom of the fingers actually grips worse in the textured grip test.

Much of the backhand design hasn’t changed between the FT6 Pro and the FT8 Pro gloves, some protective blocks have been flipped in orientation and CCM removed one of the AER-TEC holes while increasing the size of the remaining one. I don’t really have an issue with the backhand staying relatively similar and we have seen this now previously from most brands. I am firmly in the “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” side of things for this… BUT CCM did change some of the density of foams or at least the construction of the blocks near the cuff which lead to a much softer overall foam package in these areas, and combine with what I am going to show below and you get a very poor combo from a protection side of things.

People always are concerned about how much a product weights, and I am constantly re-iterating how chasing lower weight numbers isn’t a good thing and it ends up with companies delivering worse products… and the CCM Jetspeed FT8 Pro gloves are a perfect example of this. As you can see by the above photo the these 14″ FT8 Pro gloves come in at a whopping 14 grams lighter. That much weight savings is going to make a huge difference at the end of the 3rd period and you are going to have more energy to make that one extra toe drag on the blue line while down a goal with an empty net. If you were wearing FT6 Pro gloves, those 14 grams would weight you down throughout the game and you’d be too exhausted from the extra weight and would end up loosing the puck and your chances at victory.

Weight savings always comes at a cost, and whether this weight savings was done to get lighter gloves or done to save money from using less dense and solid foams only CCM and their accountants would know. But from a quality product standpoint it comes at the cost of having the most flimsy main cuff roll and inner cuffs I have ever seen and looked at. While I am sure there are some beginner price point gloves that are worse or similar, I went through my entire glove collection (over 30 gloves) as well as remembering all of the gloves I have reviewed in the past and no other glove I have looked at has been close to this bad. Even my producers Bauer Supreme 2S Pro gloves, which was the beginning of Bauer’s drop in quality by removing plastics, holds up better than these CCM FT8 Pro gloves do. Your cuffs should not fold like wet cardboard (see photo below) when a force is applied to them when they are designed to be protecting your wrist from slashes or pucks…

Comparing the FT8 Pro glove to the previous FT6 Pro glove you can see how much thinner the cuff padding is. This thinner padding is shaving weight (remember a MASSIVE 14 grams) and is going to offer considerably less protection. Comparing the inner cuff on the FT6 Pro and the FT8 Pro below should show this off again. These thinner and less dense foams aren’t going to dampen the impact forces of sticks or pucks nearly as much and are going to leave your wrists exposed from a lack of protection. While my broken stick protection “test” isn’t scientific and not the puck machine test I have done before, the results were immediately noticeably at the worse protective qualities the FT8 Pro glove offers. I really did feel like was wearing cardboard for protection compared to an actual hockey glove. CCM also decreased the foam thickness on the side index finger and outside hand protection areas as well.

I honestly can’t remember a time when I have been THIS disappointed in a new release. CCM has consistently been solid at retail for gloves and I have praised their previous gloves for being VERY close to pro stock gloves. The CCM Jetspeed FT8 Pro gloves are a massive step in the wrong direction and I really hope this isn’t the future of CCM protective. Some of this glove is still solid, the fingers, thumb, and most of the backhand is still solid for protection and AER-TEC is still an excellent feature. But these are such a poor offering you’ll notice I never once linked to FT8 Pro gloves with affiliate links because I’d rather not earn money than people buy these massive downgrades.

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