Reebok Premier III Pro Catcher - Review

Thanks to Jarid at The Hockey Shop, I was able to demo this glove for a week or so. I've only had one ice time with it, but I have two more today. So I will expand on the on ice part about it later. I'm going to start out with what I don't like about this glove. This maybe my opinion based on the fact I have only ever owned Itech gear, which might make me a little biased; but I did go in to this with an open mind.



"Premier III Pro Catch – A redesigned one-piece thumb and cuff using high performance injection molded EPE foam for better wrist mobility and increased coverage. Also features a pre-flexed palm that is game ready using a 60-degree angle fit (90 degree is custom order)."



So this is what I read about the glove, this glove definitely has a higher level of wrist mobility. This is one of the problems with the glove for me. It felt like it was just sitting on my hand and would fall off at any moment if a puck was shot hard enough in to the webbing.



As you can see the strap barely is past my hand on to the wrist. This doesn't give me a very comfortable feeling. It's like wearing a pair of driving gloves or something. Also the open end of the cuff feels like I could easily take a deflection in the wrist, or get slashed there breaking a wrist.

It features 3 straps on the top of the wrist, mid-hand, and fingers. I personally like my glove nice and tight, it felt good on the hand and fingers, but once again, that wrist strap kept bugging me.



It opens up on two sides, to get nice and open for you to air out, that's pretty nice. But two more pieces of Velcro that can wear down, and cause problems.



The glove feels a lot smaller than the 12.8, even though the specs are both NHL max size. It's definitely a "catchers" glove. Someone who is really good with the glove, and rarely misses will like this glove. I personally have known to be a tad inaccurate with my glove hand.



As you can see it really doesn't open up that wide. When I was given this glove by The Hockey Shop for demo'ing it was already quite worn in. I wouldn't say it's really fully worn in, and you might be able to stretch that opening up a bit more. But it sure felt really small.



Closing the glove also is tough, one good thing about this glove is the palm is super thick, NHL slapshots aren't going to break your hand. The negative side to that is, it feels really bulky in the plam, very robotic. It feels like there's big blocks of foam in there (which there probably is), but I personally don't think it should feel like so. Again this was worn in, but I still couldn't close it all the way.



One thing I noticed on the ice was when you look at the glove from a side angle, the webbing is angled back away from the glove. This gave me problems sealing the puck on the ice. It left about a puck width hole, so it could slip out easy with some jamming of a players stick. I did not like that at all.

Again, I have two more ice times with it, and I will expand on the on-ice performance and expand on this review. So far it's not getting much more of a 6/10 from me, and I thought I was going to absolutely fall in love with this glove the first time I slipped it on at the hockey shop.

Cheers,
J.

Originally Posted by EVL WAGN

Pretty cool first thoughts...can't wait to hear the final details. Graham from Peranis down here and myself were just talking about these new one piece trappers yesterday as well...he was asking if I had heard from anyone using them yet and what their opinions were of them. The new Vaughn V4 trapper is the same as well now...it is essentially a V3 trapper with a one piece cuff area.

I had a V4 on the other day just to put it on and it seemed to feel better than the V3. It also had better closure as well.

I've also had on a Messiah catch. The damn thing felt like I had a boxing glove on.

I put a PIII on before I bought my Zero Gs and I really didn't care for it. Have you had a Zero G catch on yet?