About Hockey Skate Sharpening

Speed and the ability to change direction quickly are two of the biggest factors in hockey. Having sharp hockey skates can aid you in the ability to stop and change directions. Keeping your hockey skates sharp is important for professionals and amateurs. In addition to helping you play your best, a sharp blade can help prevent injury.

  1. Benefits

    • Having sharp hockey skates helps you make sharper turns and stop quicker. Sharp skates cut deeper into the ice and provide more resistance to momentum when planted . A sharp skate turns more quickly and stops more decisively.

    Considerations

    • While sharper ice hockey skates make changing direction easier, they actually result in moving at a slower speed. That is because they dig deeper into the ice. The further skates dig into the ice the more friction there is on either side of the blade. Goaltenders often prefer for their skates to be a bit duller to limit how much they dig into the ice and allow faster side-to-side movement.

    Features

    • Sharpening your ice hockey skates too often will damage the blade of the skate. If a skate has been sharpened too many times it will wear and have a greater chance of cracking or breaking. There is actually a line on the skate that will let you know when it has reached a level when it should not be sharpened again.

    Size

    • A proper fit to the hockey skate is as important as having a sharp hockey skate blade, and wearing skates that don't fit correctly will offset the impact of sharp skates. A hockey skate should fit snugly around the heel of your foot while wearing a thin sock. A proper hockey skate size is usually one size smaller than an individual's shoe size, though this varies based on brand.

    Warning

    • The hockey's skate's blade is a very thin piece of metal. This metal becomes thinner as the skates are sharpened. The constant force and friction on the skate can contribute to nicks or cracks in the blade itself. Inspections of skates should be done on a routine basis, and a skate should be discarded if there is a nick or crack in the blade as this can cause injury to the skater if the blade fails.