Best mid-kick stick
Senior composite stick · Review
Bauer Nexus Tracer Review
Bauer’s lightest Nexus stick ever, built around the ER Spine shaft geometry and a mid-kick load profile. Used by Jack Eichel, Cale Makar, and Nikolaj Ehlers — the stick for puck-feel players who want one-timer power.
Weight
Lightest Nexus
Kick point
Mid-kick
Flex (Sr)
65 / 70 / 77 / 87
MSRP
$349.99
Live price comparison
Senior, 77 flex, P92 curve, right hand — the most commonly stocked configuration. Switch flex/curve at each retailer for other variants.
Prices last verified May 24, 2026. Bauer.com sale pricing can rotate — tap any “View deal” button to confirm the current price. How we compare prices →
What it is
The Nexus Tracer is Bauer’s current flagship in the Nexus family — the mid-kick line that sits between Vapor’s ultra-low quick-release and Supreme’s high-kick power profile. The Tracer’s headline is weight: Bauer pitches it as the lightest Nexus stick ever made, a meaningful claim for a mid-kick line that historically traded grams for shot power.
Two pieces of construction make this stick interesting. The ACL 2.0 shaft uses strategic carbon layering for weight reduction without sacrificing pop — the same construction we praised in our Hyperlite 2 review. More importantly, the Tracer keeps Bauer’s signature ER Spine shaft geometry: a rounded, slightly-narrower-than-square shape that pretty much every player who picks one up calls out as “the most natural-feeling shaft in hockey.” It’s not square, it’s not fully round, and it sits in your bottom hand in a way that makes saucer passes and toe drags feel surgical.
“The lightest Nexus stick ever made.”
— Bauer, Nexus Tracer product pageWho it’s for
Buy this stick if you take a lot of one-timers, you cycle pucks down low, or you’re a defenseman with an active offensive game. The mid-kick loads deep on slap shots and one-timers while the ACL 2.0 shaft keeps the stick light enough to handle real puck pressure. Cale Makar is on this stick for a reason: it shoots from the point and stickhandles in the offensive zone equally well.
Look elsewhere if you live and die by quick-release wrist shots from the slot — the Bauer Vapor Hyperlite 2 will snap pucks off faster. Or if you want CCM’s hybrid kick profile, the CCM Jetspeed FT8 Pro is the closest cross-shop. Tracer leans further toward “shot power” than either of those alternatives.
NHL pro usage
Verified via GearGeek and HockeyStickMan spec checks, May 2026. Pro stocks may differ from retail spec.
Jack Eichel
Vegas Golden Knights · C
Rotates the Tracer with the Vapor Hyperlite 2. Mid-kick profile for one-timers from the slot.
Cale Makar
Colorado Avalanche · D
Defenseman with one of the best point shots in the league.
Nikolaj Ehlers
Carolina Hurricanes · LW
Speed forward who needs a stick that loads on the rush.
Not on this stick
Common misconception
David Pastrnak uses the Bauer Nexus Sync (the Tracer’s predecessor), not the Tracer itself. We update this section weekly.
Source: GearGeek · verified May 2026.
Full specs
What we like, what we don’t
What we like
- ER Spine shaft geometry is genuinely the best-feeling shaft in hockey — the small softened ridges register in your bottom hand without being intrusive
- Mid-kick loads deep for one-timers and slap shots without being sluggish on quick releases
- Lighter in hand than the Nexus Sync it replaces — not a gimmick, you can feel it
- Currently $87.50 off MSRP on Bauer.com — one of the best price-to-performance ratios on the wall
- Pro lineage matters here: Eichel, Makar, and Ehlers are diverse style players, which speaks to versatility
What we don’t
- Bauer doesn’t publish a gram weight — “lightest Nexus ever” is real but doesn’t tell you how it compares to a Hyperlite 2
- Mid-kick will feel slow on the release if you’re coming from a low-kick stick — expect an adjustment period
- If you’ve never held an ER Spine shaft, the geometry takes a few sessions to register as natural
- P90TM curve doesn’t appear stock in some retailers’ Tracer inventory; you may need to special-order
Our verdict
The Tracer is the best mid-kick senior stick on the market in 2026 — combining the lightest Nexus shaft Bauer has ever made with the ER Spine geometry that pro forwards trust. At a current sale price of $262.49 on Bauer.com, it’s also $60 cheaper than the comparable Hyperlite 2 sale price. If your game is shot-power and puck-feel, this is the stick to buy this season.
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