Every gear guide tells you hockey is expensive. Almost none of them tell you the number.
That is usually because the number is hard to get. Prices move constantly, clearance stock appears and disappears, and a figure that was true in June is wrong by August. So most guides hedge with ranges wide enough to be useless. "Expect to spend $300 to $1,500 on a full set" is technically correct and helps nobody.
We track prices at three retailers every morning, which means we can answer it properly. Here is what a full hockey bag of gear cost on 26 August 2026, what it will cost when your kid outgrows it, and which parts of the bag are worth paying attention to.
One thing to be clear about before the numbers. These are clearance prices. Everything below comes from what the three retailers we follow had marked down that day. Walking into a shop and buying this season's gear at full retail costs considerably more. What we are answering is what this costs if you shop the clearance rails, which is the question worth asking if the budget matters.
What a full bag costs
The eight things a skater cannot take the ice without are skates, a stick, a helmet, gloves, shoulder pads, elbow pads, shin guards and pants. Jerseys and socks are usually team-issued, so they are not counted below.
| Division | Typical age | Full bag, on clearance |
|---|---|---|
| Youth | 4 to 8 | ~$500 |
| Junior | 7 to 12 | $876 |
| Intermediate | 11 to 14 | ~$1,170 |
| Senior | 14 and up | $1,301 |
The Junior and Senior figures are firm. We had enough products tracked in every slot to take a real median.
The Youth and Intermediate figures are estimates, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Clearance rails carry fewer small sizes, so we had fewer than five shin guards tracked in Youth, and fewer than five shin guards or pairs of pants in Intermediate. Those two totals fill the gaps by scaling from the divisions either side. Treat them as approximate. Everything in the Junior and Senior rows is measured.
If your reaction to $876 for a ten-year-old is that it seems high, that is the correct reaction. It is also before ice time, league fees, tournaments and travel.
The jump nobody warns you about
Here is the part that surprises people, including us.
We compared products against themselves. The same model, the same brand, one size larger, both listed at the same time. That removes the guesswork, because it is not comparing a cheap Junior stick against an expensive Senior one, it is comparing a stick against the identical stick.
| Step | Models compared | Price change |
|---|---|---|
| Youth to Junior | 28 | +75% |
| Junior to Intermediate | 78 | +29% |
| Intermediate to Senior | 88 | +8% |
Those figures come from 194 paired listings, not from a handful of examples.
Most parents brace for the move into Senior gear. That is the wrong thing to brace for. Going from Intermediate to Senior costs about 8% more for the same equipment. The expensive transition happens years earlier, when a kid moves out of Youth sizing and prices jump by three quarters.
A concrete example. The CCM Tacks XF Pro is one skate sold across all four sizes. On 26 August 2026 it was listed at:
$138 Youth · $390 Junior · $640 Intermediate · $720 Senior
The same skate. Five times the price from the smallest size to the largest.
Where the money actually is
Break that size premium down by item and it stops being spread evenly.
| Item | Youth to Junior | Junior to Int. | Int. to Senior |
|---|---|---|---|
| Skates | +60% | +24% | +18% |
| Sticks | +31% | +35% | +8% |
| Gloves | not enough data | +6% | +6% |
| Shoulder pads | not enough data | +7% | +7% |
| Elbow pads | not enough data | +8% | not enough data |
Almost the entire size premium sits in skates and sticks. Protective gear costs roughly the same whatever size you buy, moving 6% to 8% per step.
This is worth knowing because it tells you where to concentrate. A parent dreading the next size up is usually picturing the whole bag getting more expensive. It is really two items. If you get the skates and the stick right, the other six barely move.
Percentage off is a bad signal
We expected to find categories where clearance discounts run deeper than others, so we could tell you what to wait for. We did not find that.
| Item | Median discount | Median saving |
|---|---|---|
| Skates | 30% | $113 |
| Sticks | 25% | $70 |
| Helmets | 29% | $57 |
| Shin guards | 30% | $44 |
| Gloves | 25% | $44 |
| Shoulder pads | 25% | $38 |
| Elbow pads | 30% | $33 |
| Pants | 27% | $30 |
Look at the middle column. Nearly everything clears between 25% and 30%. There is no category where patience pays off dramatically more than another.
Which means the percentage is close to useless as a shopping signal, and the column on the right is the one that matters. Skates save around $113 not because they discount harder than elbow pads but because they cost more to begin with. Both sit at 30% off. One of those percentages is worth $113 and the other is worth $33.
The practical version. Put your attention on skates and sticks and buy the rest whenever you find it. Waiting three weeks for a better price on elbow pads might save you $33. The same patience on skates is worth more than three times that, for the same amount of waiting.
A few things worth knowing
Skates are the one thing to try on. Every other item on the list is forgiving about fit. Skates are not, and a bad pair will do more damage to a kid's enjoyment of the sport than anything else you buy. If the choice is between a well-fitting skate at full price and a bargain in the wrong shape, buy the one that fits.
Intermediate is thin on clearance. Intermediate was the only division where we came up short in two categories, with fewer than five shin guards and fewer than five pairs of pants tracked against dozens in Junior and Senior. If your kid is heading into that size, start looking earlier than you think you need to. Waiting for a price to drop on something with three listings is a different proposition from waiting on something with forty.
Last year's model is the actual saving. Nearly all of the discounts above are on gear from a previous line, not on current stock marked down. The performance difference between this year's mid-tier stick and last year's is smaller than the price difference.
Helmets do not come in divisions. They are sized by head measurement, so "Junior" is not a thing you will see on a helmet listing. Budget around $100 whatever age your kid is. It is also the one item where we would not chase the bottom of the price range.
How we got these numbers
Every figure here comes from products Daily Hockey Deals had tracked and confirmed in stock on 26 August 2026, across 991 live listings from Pure Hockey, HockeyMonkey and Ice Warehouse. Roller and inline gear is excluded. The size comparisons draw on 194 paired listings where the same model was available in two adjacent sizes at the same time.
Prices are medians rather than averages, so a single strange listing cannot distort a figure. Where we had fewer than five products in a category, we have said so rather than quoting a number built on two listings. Size comparisons pair a product against itself rather than comparing category averages, because comparing a Junior catalogue against a Senior one measures the difference in what retailers stock, not the difference in price.
These numbers describe one day, and we update them as the season goes on. For what is on clearance right now, we build a full bag of gear every morning from live stock.
See a full bag of gear, priced today →
Daily Hockey Deals earns a commission on some purchases made through our links. It does not affect the prices above, which are what the retailers were charging.