The hockey bag problem
Why gear bags hold odour the way they do, and the one habit that changes it.
A hockey bag is close to a worst case. Synthetic fabric and foam that hold moisture, packed tight, zipped shut, and put somewhere warm while still damp. Then opened again two days later. Everything about that sequence favours odour.
The habit that matters more than any product: unzip the bag and pull the gear out after every single use. Not most times. Every time. Skates, gloves and pads out on a rack or a garage floor where air can reach them. A pouch works on air; it cannot dry out soaked equipment, and it is not meant to.
Once the gear is actually dry, the pouch does its job well, because the bag is exactly the kind of small closed volume it is built for. Put it inside the bag and close it — sealed in with the odour, not sitting in the same room. A second one inside a skate bag or a glove pocket is worth it.
Expect to replace them more often than a closet pouch. A gear bag is warm, humid and opened constantly, and that combination runs through a pouch faster than three months.
For end-of-season storage, do it properly once: everything dried completely, the bag wiped out and left open for a day, then a fresh pouch inside and the bag closed. That is the difference between gear that is fine in September and gear that is not.