The Bauer Supreme ADV Hockey Stick Is Here: Lets Break it Down

-- Updated 10/2019 --

The time has come again. Bauer has release it's latest ADV hockey stick pushing the $400 price point. The Supreme ADV promises to be the best stick you've ever had your mitts on. Read on to get all the details (Hint: It's basically the same thing we noted last year. Pretty sure the advancements since last year are about covered. Crazy, huh?)

“After three years of top-secret development, 2,000 hours of on-ice testing, and just 3,000 sticks made worldwide, our Advanced Series is ready to be unveiled as the lightest stick ever made. This once-in-a-lifetime stick is so limited, you might be the only one on your team who has it. Get it in your hands starting January 27 October 12.” - bauer.com

The day has come and gone; January 27^th October 12th. The long-ish awaited release of the Bauer Advanced Series hockey stick came with all the pomp and circumstance that could probably be made over a hockey stick. Each shop was limited to 12 sticks to sell total. They only came in one curve pattern (P92) and only had three of Bauer’s typical flexes, 67, 77, and 87. I’m sure they were only in griptac finish as well, but haven’t validated that to this point. Legions of admiring Bauer fans willing to brave mostly cold temperatures and stand in line for an hour-plus were rewarded with “The lightest stick ever made” that assures us that users of it will “Do everything faster.” Let’s dig into this a bit further.

First, I want to give Bauer a big high-five for this marketing campaign. They built up the hype, kept it as “need-to-know” as they could, and benefited by easily selling through the most expensive retail priced hockey stick ever produced. Yeah, in case you missed that last part, the sticks were going for $350 in the States and $399 in Canada. That’s a big price jump over the rest of their lines that they’ve kept capped just under the $300 USD threshold for years now. It’s even more impressive when you really evaluate the specs on the stick. We all know lighter sticks are easier to maneuver. At 375g for a senior size stick, they’re about 40-70 grams lighter than the other Supreme flagship offering from Bauer as well as nearly all of their major competitors. Surely in the world someone else has produced something close before, but it’s never reached the major manufacturer fold until now. Outside of that though, the major selling points are around their development methods and how their using "Advanced carbon" to make it lighter. Unless there is some new revolutionary new strength addition to this build, which generally doesn’t come paired with lighter and thinner-walled products, even with flatter and marginally higher strength carbon, you can plan on them breaking just as frequently as your other high-end sticks except that it will cost you about $100 more per stick to replace it…..if you can get one.

So let’s check out the few known differences against our Rogue and Dispatch hockey sticks:

Aside from the cosmetics of the stick, this year they actually altered the taper of the shaft a touch into a bubble to keep up with Warrior's design and marketing efforts, that really is about it. You're getting a lighter stick with likely some marginal improvement in response that nearly all of us wouldn't even notice if you didn't tell us it was there. The artwork is slick though, aside from the abundance of electric green.

I suspect that this release is less about improving the hockey stick and more about a company with a troubled financial past in recent years, trying to survive. The Bauer company has been sold multiple times in recent years because of their poor results. They filed bankruptcy at the end of 2016 and have been trying to claw their way back to sustainability ever since. They’ve lost competitive advantage in stick manufacturing in recent years as stick quality and performance from all manufacturers has more-or-less hit parity. They needed a way to test the market for increased revenue opportunities like seeing if a stick priced at the $350-$400 price point would be accepted. If successful, it paints the way for subsequent moves such as increasing prices across all of their lines to match the new higher threshold and increase overall segment revenues. It’s capitalism in action and you can’t fault them for wanting to please their shareholders; especially coming out of bankruptcy.

You probably know this, but at Twig Hockey Company, this isn’t how we view things. Our focus is on the hockey purists. The folks who trek out to the rink multiple times a week just because of the passion they and their families have for the game. We love the game and want everyone to feel the same love. A more expensive hockey stick with minimal game improvement features isn’t going to help that. Making a sport that is already very hard for your average middle-income family to afford, now even tougher, seems pretty shady in our eyes. We know that the western world is built around large corporation branding and it's tough for many to move away from a brand standard.

Even if we didn't run this company, you wouldn't catch us buying an ADV or any stick for $350. We're here to find the maximum performance for our customers at the minimum cost, a view not too different in fundamentals than those investing in large companies for financial gain. So next time your twig breaks, think about where you want you hard-earned money to end up; some big brand with questionable motives or the up-and-comers of the industry trying to make a difference.