Skate Sharpening 101 with Sparx Hockey Founder & CEO Russ Layton

SPEAKER_02 1:16

This episode is powered by NHL Sense Arena. Hello, hockey friends and families around the world, and welcome back to another edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. I'm Leah Lias, joined by Mike Vinelli and Christy Cashier Burns. You know, if you listen to our show before, you know we've touched on skate sharpening in several episodes over the years. But today we're doing it. We're doing something we've never done before. We're dedicating an entire conversation to one of the most important and most misunderstood parts of hockey equipment. Ask a hockey player about their stick. They'll know every detail, they'll know the flex, they'll know the curve, they'll know the materials, they'll know who makes it. It's actually kind of annoying because the player makes the stick, not the other way around. But then you ask them about their skates and the sharpening, and you might hear, oh, I don't know. I just hand it to the guy. My parents just hand it to the guy and they do that. Truth is, skate sharpening can have a huge impact on confidence, turning, stopping, acceleration, overall feel on the ice, amongst other things. And today, with different types of steel, new blade profiles, and more sharpening options than ever before, it can be confusing for families to know what's exactly the best for their player. We're going to answer all those questions today because our guest is Russell Leighton, founder and CEO of Sparks Hockey, a company all of you have heard of. And it's one that's helping change the way hockey families think about skate sharpening through consistency, education, and innovation. And I should throw in there and ease as well, right? Today we're going to answer the questions every hockey family has about skate sharpening. How often to sharpen, how to choose the right hollow. Do you even know what a hollow is? What's the different steel options? How many players can understand the connection between their skates and their performance? All that's coming up on today's episode. But first, let's welcome the guest. Russ, welcome to our kids play hot. Thank you so much. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Russ, we're so excited to have you here. We've been talking about having you on for months now. We finally landed this show. It only took six years. It only took six years. I hope you're ready for it because we're going to pepper you with a dozens of questions. So let's get started. Lee touched on it. Misconceptions. Um, what do you think the biggest misconception families have, youth hockey families have, about skate sharpenings? You have the floor.

SPEAKER_04 3:28

So I would I would say the biggest one, and like the first question that a lot of people ask is they will say, Well, how often should I get my skate sharpened? That comes up all the time. It comes up with decisions of how to get your skate sharpened. Do you do you purchase a skate sharpener? Do you go to a store? And I think the one like the aha moment that a lot of people have when I say this, um, the biggest one, is around like you, it's not a number of hours that you should skate on your skates between skate sharpenings. A lost edge can happen at any point. Um, it could even happen you get your skate sharpened, you're tying them in the locker room, and you step on the wrong thing in the locker room, and you haven't even ever put a stride on that skate sharpening, and it's and it's trash. This especially comes up with kids because kids probably aren't paying as close attention to where their feet are and they're monkeying around in the locker room and stuff, playing with their buddies and pushing each other around and stuff. And you can step on somebody else's skate that's sitting there or somebody else's stick. Um, I know as somebody that's been doing this now for you know, full time in my life for over 10 years, even when I sharpen my skates, like I very carefully get onto the bench. I very carefully put my feet on the mat. I make sure I'm not stepping in any gaps between mat. I'm not stepping on anything under the bench. And even then, I can like lose an edge because I I skated on something that I shouldn't have or stepped on something that I shouldn't have. So, biggest misconception is it's some formula, like four hours or five hours. It's really as soon as you feel you've lost an edge, that's now you need a skate trainer.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, I mean, this is this is so like from my point of view, and I think from you know my history of of coaching. So I've I've worked, I think when we had Russ in uh with Sparks, uh, you know, I've I had at the time been working with tens of thousands of coaches. That's not even a joke, tens of thousands of coaches. We had Sparks in, Russ in, you know, the whole group in to a USA hockey clinic uh 10 years ago, maybe, right? Russ? And it was like it was it was the hardest, it was the hardest clinic, it was the hardest subject to get into the clinic and get approved. And at the end of the clinic, it was the most requested feedback and follow-up presentation that we did. And this was a level four clinic, so this is like 500 coaches, and and the lack of education around probably the most important performance piece of equipment was startling to me. I mean, it kind of opened my eyes up because again, I wasn't really a skate geek, but I, you know, I grew up in a pro shop, so I sharpened skates my whole life. So I understood what Russ is talking about, I think, for every parent to and Russ, can you just talk a little bit about like what is the way? It's not ours, but what is the way without cutting your finger open to look to look and and and examine and see your blade. And I think before, and and again, we can get to it a little bit later too, but just understanding the little nuances of what you know burrs are and how that affects performance. Um and I think because again, like when we had Russ in, it was like I said, it was one of those kind of things where it was like just talk about blades, and I think the coaches were mesmerized by the fact that it's something they've been missing this whole time, and it probably was the easiest thing for them to fix because they didn't have to be an expert in it, they could go to somebody like Russ.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

Yeah. Um, I'd say, you know, if you have if you have level edges and your edge is and everybody does the fingernail test is tried and true. I still use it to this day. So if you have level edges and the fingernail tests works down the blade, your edges are are really good and reliable. And usually what happens is how you know you need escape sharpening, I alluded to in a second ago. I mean, every hockey player knows this feeling that you lose that edge and you go to turn towards that direction, and you're just nothing there, and you just fall. Um, and there's really no, it's it's a very catastrophic failure. Like it doesn't, Christy, another misconception along the lines of how many hours is like that your edges gradually like get duller, like a kitchen knife. Like if you have a kitchen knife sitting around, like you know when it's sharp because it's beautiful and it just cuts whatever you're cutting, but then you know, you just have to put more energy into it as time goes on, and the knife's just not as efficient. That's kind of not how skates work. It's not like they just get duller and duller and duller, and then you have to sharpen them. It's usually like a catastrophic failure caused by kicking or stepping on something you shouldn't have. And when you when you have that failure, and then you take your skate off, where whatever side you fell on, you will go to that edge and you'll be you'll you'll shave nail all the way up until right where the edge is gone, and then it's totally smooth. Like your nail just rides right over that edge, and it's it's so apparent. Like it's like every single, and I've been doing this again for over a decade. Every time I lose an edge, I'm like, okay, does my theory work? Whichever sides that I lost, I go shave, shave, shave, boop. It just like it just slides like it's ice. And so there's 100% correlation between like you fell, lost edge, no fingernail. And then you basically have to sharpen again and deburr, take the burr off after sharpening. So when you sharpen a skate, there's a little remnant piece of metal that's extruded out of the hollow. So when you sharpen and de-burr and you get a nice clean edge the whole way down that shaves a little bit of fingernail, your edges are perfect again. And you can go skate with confidence and turn and be aggressive and rely on your skates different than you did the last time you skated where you know you you learned you couldn't turn left or couldn't turn right anymore.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

You're right. Russia there's a feeling every hockey player knows that feeling of losing an edge. Uh in if it happens in a game, you uh enter a panicked skate uh state, excuse me. I guess pun intended on that one. Um, and you got to figure it out. So for the audience here, let's let's do this. Let's not assume they know anything about skate sharpening, right? Because I I know there's someone sitting there, they're going, What do you balance edge is spurred? Yeah, you know what? Okay, let's walk through the skate blade and let's walk through like what you're doing a little bit now. Like, what is yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:09

I was actually going to because I didn't I should have prepared for this, but um it's okay. Um you know, so because so here's the ice. I'm gonna just draw a little picture, like you know, the blue is the ice, right? And the green, I've obviously it looks like this in real life. Oh, that didn't matter, it flipped it over.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

Yeah, and for those of you listening right now, he's drawn a flat line, and then there's a skate blade with a hollow on it, which is like a little half uh oval on it, just so you can't.

SPEAKER_04 10:40

Your blade is an arc, right? It's not a flat surface, and that arc has two edges, two points, right? Your left edge and your right edge, and that's what gives you the ability to turn and to stop. If you didn't have those, you would just slide correctly. So when you sharpen your skates, you are putting that hollow into the blade. Um, and the depth of that hollow governs how much grip you have. And so at the highest levels, people are optimizing their skate sharpening to put the shallowest hollow, the flattest hollow. So remember when I said it's not flat, you want to get as flat as you can get because you'll go the fastest with the least amount of resistance in the ice.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

Right.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

But you will put a deeper hollow if you want grip. And so you're balancing, we call it grip and glide. And so when you get a skate sharpening, you are putting that very even hollow down the length of your blade to a depth that is appropriate for your skill level, your weight, um, your preference from a skating standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Right. Now, look, let me dive in here because this is one of the most important things that we try and tell parents. When and Mike has said it many times. If you walk into a skate sharpening situation and they don't ask you what hollow, they don't ask you how you want to run. Run. You need to leave. Right. So some of this is a result. Yeah, let's play that song right now. Some of this is a result of uh, you know, Russ, to be fair, you've disrupted skate sharpening in the best way possible, where people are just far more educated now about hollows, about what's going on. I think when we were all growing up, is you went to the magical Zamboni room, or you went to the magical pro shop guy and he did it and you had no idea what he was doing it at, but most people got it done at a half. That's usually like the the hollow that's kind of like the default. Um, but what's happening now is I find you have a lot of amateur skate sharpening people out there that uh I know someone the other day, they came to me and they could they I can't skate. This guy sharpened my skates and can't skate. I said, What hollow did they use? And they said, Well, I don't know, but I feel like I can't even turn on the ice. Yeah, and what I came to find out is they were using something like a three-eighth or even more, um, and it was not appropriate for this skater, right? So I said, You need to go back and ask for a half or a or a five-eighths. And again, parents, you you should all you got to do to look these up, by the way, is just go on Google and search skate hollows or radius of hollows, and you'll find all the different ones, okay? But if you've got someone new to skating and they've got an extreme hollow, you're gonna have a hard time skating. Adversely, if you go to almost no hollow, you're gonna have a hard time skating. You gotta find what works for you, okay? That's the first part of this, all right. And when you find it, you'll know. All right. So it's so important you know that hollow and that you ask for it. If you don't want your kids to get their skate sharpened and come running back to you saying, Hey, these are horrible. This is this is something you need to know. All right. I also don't ever recommend getting your skate sharpened at the away rink. I I recommend you have one of these machines in your house, but we'll get to that later. Go ahead, Russ.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Right. And half is half is is the usually the go-to one, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:44

That's the default, I think. Yeah, everybody's you know, like like it depends. Oh, it's like half. I think Christy, most people haven't tried anything beyond a half. Right. I think that's it's like that's that's what I tell people. If you're gonna start somewhere, yeah, start there, and then you can start to experiment a little bit. Because I like I like five eights, right? Like I'm a little bit up the chart a little bit. Yeah, go ahead, Russ. Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

What's interesting is like a little bit of the entrepreneurship story here is when I was struggling to get my skate sharpened sharpened, and then I had a child, uh, and then I was struggling to get their skate sharpened. That's when I was like, okay, I I need to figure out how to be able to control this because I don't really have the time to go as often as I would like to. I was, you know, I really like sharp skates and well-maintained skates, and it was just it was just wearing on me how many times I would have to do this. I was like, I have every other tool, I want a tool to do this at home. When I started, and now this is like 20, anywhere from like 2001 to 2012, is when I was like having these kind of like these thoughts about building this myself. And when I started digging into it, there was so much to learn. Yeah, like that I had been skating my whole life. Like, and and like you said, like all of this was completely like I wasn't exposed to any of the concepts of skate sharp by the people that were doing it, probably on purpose a little bit. Um, you know, it was something black box. I give my skates, they sharpen them, and I trust them, and they give them back, and there was this reciprocal kind of trust thing going on there. Yeah, and so I was relying on them and they weren't trying to educate me. And so I would get what I got and I was happy with it. But when I started digging into it and like I learned about the hollow, and then I learned about how you could make it sharper or or or flatter for speed. And and there was actually, this is probably something your your viewers or listeners may uh resonate with. I as kind of I always had an engineering mind, and so I would like lose my edge often, and it would upset me that I would have to be inconvenienced to go get my skate sharpening. And I saw my mind went like, okay, I'll make my skate sharper so that it holds the edge longer. And like this was the math I did in my head. We've all done that. I said, Yeah, I said, like, I keep losing my edge. Can you make them sharper? And he was like, Yeah, I'll make them sharpener, sharper. And then he's like, you seven sixteenths or three eighths or something like that. And I was like, Okay, uh, let's do that. And and it didn't solve the problem, but what I learned later was all it did was give me more friction and kind of make my skating worse because when you lose your edge, it doesn't matter if it's a three-eighths, a five-eighths, a three-quarter, a one-inch. If you step on the wrong thing and lose your edge, you're falling. It doesn't, you can't make them sharper because as I said before, it's not a kitchen knife that wears down over time. And so I was struggling with that, but once I started digging into like how hollows work, and then there was actually like different sharpening shapes, like flat bottoms, um, that uh that I was like, like as an engineering kind of thinking person, I was like, this is amazing. I have to share this with other people. Like, I'm I'm learning all this stuff, and I think everybody I would I skate with would love to know this, and so that's where I was like, oh my God, if we build this product and we educate people, like it'll just create this whole generation of people who take sharpening into their own hands and optimize it for their ability and their desires on the ice and don't have don't lose edges. And so the point you're raising is amazing because I was in the exact same spot.

SPEAKER_02 17:25

Yeah, I mean the other thing that's crazy about it to me is there's so much emphasis on sticks, and and I'm not looking to say sticks are not important, like you know, there's a feel to it, but I'll say what I said in the intro again, which is like the player makes the stick much more than the stick makes the player. Skates are a little bit of a different deal here, all right? Because like again, the metaphor I always use, it's like if you have a really tripped out car, right? Like you can have a really cool looking car, but if your tires aren't working or you don't have wheels on the car, it doesn't matter how cool the car looks, right? You you got to take care of the wheels. That's you know, that's why we metaphoric all the skates your wheels, right? So that's an important part. You know, Russ, you also brought up brought up some other things too. Uh profiling, right? And and things like there's so much stuff here now that that I think parents should know about. Why don't you dive into what a profile is and why that's important?

SPEAKER_04 18:16

So as we talked, so if you're if you're skating forward, your inside to outside shape is your hollow, right? So that's the thing that you're stopping with or turning with, but in the other direction, from heel to toe, um, you can change that shape of the blade. Um, this has been you know going on for decades. Um, there are various shapes that have been tried. The um, you know, everything from the pros down to youth, different percentages of participants mess with profiling um or experiment with profiling. The the manufacturers of these blades are putting out profiles now that have had you know a decade or more of experimentation. Um, and so I think the profiles that most of the manufacturers are putting out are uh generally desirable. And actually, if you were to scan, say, the leading skate blade and skate manufacturer's skate blades, those stock profiles kind of match the very closely to the most uh specified non-stock profile. So I'd say those two are converging. Um even in the NHL, there's a lot of um disagreement, I would say, or not inconsistency with how important profiling is because the stock profiles are so close to what people are specifying. Um at Sparks, we've not kind of dove into making a profiling machine or advocating for profiling because you know, when you speak to the market, even an educated market, it you get a very split kind of answer of how important that is. I would just say that there you can affect profile, the shape from the heel to the toe. Most stock profiles match pretty much what most of the people who are profiling are putting on. And then there are other things that contribute to because okay, so like why are we missing with profiling? We're changing the stance of the player on the ice and we're affecting the shape and the length of the blade that's touching the ice, right? If you make the shape so that the amount of blade touching the ice is very short, you're gonna have a state that's very dynamic. It's not gonna be very stable standing up because you're gonna be either leaning forward or leaning back, you're not gonna feel secure. But then you can make the blade really long where it touches the ice, and now you don't feel very maneuverable. So there's kind of a sweet spot that everybody's narrowed in on. Um, and so that's profiling, it's changing that. And then the last thing I was gonna say was so many other things affect this: the footbed of the skate, the thickness of your socks, your biomechanics, your posture, um, whether or not the blade holder, the white, usually the white part above the blade, what angle that is relative to the boot. All of those things are playing in here. And I think most of the manufacturers have kind of found, if you will, like vanilla. They've found the thing that's the least offensive to everyone.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

I think um, you know, I think you know, and you could go down, you can go down the rabbit hole of profiling, right? And talk about all the different, you know, you know, why players use blades in certain ways, what their profile is, at what age do you get a profile? But I think like for our audience, and I think what you're saying too, Russ, is like the the majority of the players that go in skates, can you just talk a little bit about like like the the fact is the skates, the most important piece of that uh cycle, right, are are level and uh sharp blades. Like that's the most like no matter what profile you have, if you have a greatest profile in the world and the blades aren't level, the edges like you're talking about, that that that diagram, right? That those two edges don't meet together, then whatever profile you have is irrelevant, doesn't matter. Um so I think I think you know for our audience and people listening and getting down, like you know, and I think it's gotten maybe a little more complex because back in the day, it was like you got one set of steel, it was on your skates, that was it. If it got dull, you had to wait and wait and wait and wait for the like like Lee's saying, wait for the Zamboni guy to get off and hopefully the machines there and somebody can sharpen your skates. But again, can you talk a little bit about like like how the technology now is allowed like families, and especially like a um a unit like a Sparks machine, like has allowed families now to almost experiment a little bit more at a you know, again, it's not free, but it's a lower cost of saying, hey, I want I'm in a blade, I've got two or three sets of steel, I'm stuck in Osh. Gosh, and and not no offense to Osh Gosh, but I'm I'm stuck somewhere where I can't get my skates sharpened. I've seen this with hot the highest level players, right? That they go to a that they go to a showcase or they go to a tryout and they've got steel. It's not even sharpened, it's not ready to go, and they lose an edge and they're stuck because they're somewhere where doesn't have a machine.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

I gotta say, real quick, Mike, just for the audience listening, because I'm I you I'm I'm trying to think about things people might not be aware aware of, right? Uh it's important to know that, yeah, most skates today can change steel. You can bring three or four different pieces of steel and flip them out in a game. Like when we were growing up, that wasn't the case. Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

So I think that's my point to my question to Russ then would be if if you're able to switch steel, and and again, I'm I'm assuming everybody knows, they look at their kids' skates, they say, Oh, there's a little trigger there, I can pop the blade out, I can unscrew it, I can change my blade. How beneficial and fun is it really when you're educating yourself like you, like when you geek out about like, oh my god, I want to know all about blades, like how easy it is to tell and say, Hey, I'm gonna try my son and uh or daughter and a half inch or a three eighths or this or that? Like, like the flexibility of doing that with a machine that can do that, you know, within minutes.

SPEAKER_04 24:29

Yeah, it's so I would say a couple things. One is like get a sharpener. We don't, I mean, as a as a hockey parent, a hockey player for four plus decades, like not having a skate sharpener at home is it's it just doesn't even make sense because of what we talked about earlier. You can lose an edge the instant you you you're putting your skates on. You haven't even stepped on the ice. So it's impossible really, you know, to really count on a third party and their hours and all that stuff to to maintain uh skates because the edges just go at any moment. The thing you raised, Mike, about skates, skates across the board now. When I started, when we started Sparks, the you know, the advent of the trigger steel, we call it, um, that that was just getting going. And so at the time, you only had certain models. Now, now you almost can't buy skates that don't have removable steel. And just as a quick aside, like when we started Sparks, professional hockey teams would travel like like a touring band. Like they would have these huge cases with sharpeners and they'd load them onto airplanes and they'd have to look at the weight of the plane carrying ability and figure out how much like teams don't travel with sharpeners anymore, they just travel with steel, right? So they'll travel with like five to ten sets of steel for every player on the road. Okay, so back to skates. So you should have a sharpener because you can lose your edge anytime. You can have multiple sets of steel. And one thing that's really, really, I'd say um you can feel it is if you're especially in the practice setting, if you're on, we talked about before, or you guys set it up like five eighths or half, you can you can then experiment, like out of practice, you can go up or down a sixteenth, like whether or not you feel, and it's usually up in hollow. You want to flatten the edges out. So you're usually you've usually honed in on a half inch or five eighths. And then when you're going to practice, you should explore going one sixteenth flatter until you're until the trade-off of getting flatter results in you not feeling as aggressive, cornering and stopping. Because as you go flatter in the straightaway, when you're chasing somebody down or you're on a breakaway, you're gonna have less resistance and you're gonna get ultimately faster peak speed. Um, so uh I would say, going back to what Mike said to set this up, was like forget about profile, forget about footbeds, forget about even like the quality of the skate from an initial standpoint. Even the $1,500 top-of-the-line skates right now, if you have lost an edge, they're useless. You'd be much better off with $300 skates and properly sharpened skate blades than $1,500 skates with a lost edge. I'm so glad you said that. Parents are thinking you right now. 100%. And yeah, and so I would say kind of what you guys said is like first and foremost, your recently sharpened edges that are level and sharp the whole way down, and your your athlete, your player is gonna feel confident, is gonna be able to turn and stop and not worry.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

My only so I'm just saying, my only public service uh uh statement would be too like when I'm working with players that are still growing, like somebody that doesn't like somebody that's not in a skate, the skates, and and Russell alluded to it, the skates are so well made now, like they're made to last. Like back in the day, you're not using Cooper Roos, right? That are falling up, like you get a season out of them, and the leather is falling apart.

SPEAKER_04 28:12

Like these skates, especially turbos that are made out of like an injection molded piece of plastic or something.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

What about mega skates if we're going here? Like, come on.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Right, but I mean, I just so I would always invest in I me personally, when I tell every one of my student athletes and anybody that's playing, invest in the low, the even a used boot, the best quality boot you could get at a at a low at the lower cost range, but invest in multiple sets of steel. Like if you're gonna put your money into your feet, put them into the piece that really, really does affect right you know, where you know, especially these kids that go to a tournament for a whole weekend. Imagine this, you go there and you got one one blade, and like Russ said, the first you're all excited, you get you're up in Can Am, you run out, and you step right in between the the the rubber mat and crack your edge, and your whole weekend's gone. It's over. And you know, the dads are in there trying to, they're using every kind of re-edger there is, you're not getting it back. And I think that you know, there again, there's little fixes we could talk about, but I think most of the time you're gonna invest, invest in steel, and then and then you know you're gonna get a return because like right you that means you could go, you could be home, you could sharpen three sets of steel, all at five Ace, and you can interchange them, bop, bop, bop, you know, and in the whole weekend you're good to go. And I think you've gotten you've made your money back on a missed weekend of hockey.

SPEAKER_04 29:29

Yeah, that panic moment when you're on a tournament. I mean, I remember like being in Lake Placid, which like you know, we'd gone there several times. I went there as a kid, and then I brought my own kid there, and I would be and it makes sense because there's only like 12 weeks a year that places hockey bonkers, and then it shuts down, but you're there and there's you know a hundred teams, and like you're like, there's no place to get my skate sharpen. How's this possible? They're like, Oh, yeah, some guy used to have a truck and parked it here, but he's not here anymore. That's that store's closed, and this store's whatever. Like, you can't imagine the anxiety as a parent when your kid loses an edge and you're far from home, and now there's like and you spend all that money.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Let's not let's not forget that.

SPEAKER_04 30:14

You can't predict when the next game is you could have two games back to back, right?

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Sure. Yeah, I have a question about positions, forwards, defensemen, goalies. Are there certain sharpening differences? Is it more of a skating style than a position when you go to get your kids skate sharpened depending on what position they play?

SPEAKER_04 30:37

Yeah, I I think it probably generally boils down to like player um preference in terms of like do they like you will hear people or you know, we've even said before, like that, you know, you'll hear defensemen who are who tend to prefer a slightly deeper hollow because their job is to prevent the movement of another player.

SPEAKER_03 31:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:01

And so if you're if you're gonna try to like push somebody away from the front of the net or stop somebody on a breakaway, you want an edge you can rely on. Whereas if you're a forward, you want to be able to kind of like slide laterally a little bit on your on your edges to be able to wait for like a one-timer pass and just drift. Defensemen don't drift as much. Um, but I would say it probably mostly boils down to as a player, do you like a really sharp edge? How strong are you, right? So you'll you'll have people, um, you know, we've we've heard, or you probably look it up, like you've we've heard like Ovechkin tends to like a deeper hollow than you would suspect for how big of a human he is, how big of a strong of a man he is, but he's also got the strength to overcome whatever friction is there, right? Um so I you know I skate on five eighths like Lee, um, but I have guys that I skate with that are over an inch, you know. Yeah interesting.

SPEAKER_02 32:05

So so let me dive in here. This is the point of the episode. I gotta give the big kind of disclaimer or the big moment for the parents listening. Okay. If you as the guardian are in the mindset of I can give my kid a secret advantage by knowing this information, if your kid's under 12, I'm gonna give you this disclaimer now. You you can absolutely experiment with these things, but do not put yourself in a position where you think I'm gonna give my kid an advantage. Because here's the truth about skate sharpening, gang. If you're not the one in the skates, you have no idea how they feel for that person. All right. And and Russ, you just bring up a great point. Like you can go, well, Ovechkin uses this. Well, Ovechkin is 220 pounds and six, whatever. Your kid is 90 pounds, all right, and five foot one. It does not work that way. All right. The truth is this, and I'm this is the other part of the disclaimer. Your kid has to just learn how to skate, period. Right? Like 12 and under, being having having sharpened skates is insanely important. And knowing this information is an advantage, but your kid has to learn how to skate. All right, when they get older than 12, and you and there's some variance on that, that's a great time to start when your kid can really communicate. Like, hey, why don't we go to a stick and puck and try three or four different hollows and see what you feel, see what you like. Your kid will know right away, oh, that feels much better. But like, you can't be the dad or mom at home thinking, oh, if I get my kid in 5/8, they're gonna fly. Well, your kid can't skate, kid's not even great at skating yet. That's another part of this, too, is as you evolve as a skater, your preferences are gonna change. So I'm I'm saying this as a disclaimer again. It is so important you're aware of hollows, it's so important you're aware of like this hack, it's not really a hack anymore, bringing multiple sets of steel to a game, all right, or a practice. It's so important to understand uh you know, profiles do exist. I I'm kind of with you, Russ, that I don't think there's enough there to prove to me that that's a be-all end-all. Not to mention, I think profiles, you know, the more you skate, you can lose them, correct? So it's like there's aspects there, but by far and by big by and large, learning the art of skating is the most important skill. And if you have the tools of the trade to sharpen your skates, your kid, that's what gives them an advantage, right? But you gotta let them feel what works for them, and what works for you or somebody else may not work for them. We're all different, especially. Russell, throw this to you. You know, between the ages of 10 and 14, where your kid's body is changing by the hour, right? What they're in at 10 and 14 could be dramatically different. Not to mention their foot size, right? Like that's another thing we didn't even talk about. Like the bigger your foot, the longer the steel, the longer the steel, the different, you know, changes things, right? So I don't know if there's a question in here. I'm just I'm just kind of making the point because I don't want people listening to this to be like, no, yeah, profile, hollow, got it. This is the thing. My kid's gonna be perfect in this edge. Like, no, no, you gotta you gotta feel these things out, right? And and at the end of the day, like I said, you start with something, half usually is the default, and you build from there, right, Russ? I mean, that's that's kind of what I'm thinking from the younger half. When you get to the older half, this is actually a different discussion.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

I was thinking of a variant of what you're saying, which is um, you know, you've when we talked about like really expensive equipment versus affordable equipment and what does it buy you, and and profiles and and which hollow to choose to give yourself an advantage if you don't have a fundamental kind of talent for or what whatever what you have there. But um you you often hear this like if you know if you give the Hughes brothers $400 skates and a hundred dollar stick, they're gonna probably still look like the Hughes brothers, right? But just annoyed, yeah. If you give if you give them lost edges, they're hosed just like a beginner house lead player. Like, you can do nothing if you can't turn left. If every time you turn left you fall, it's gonna affect the highest level NHL player to the lowest level person. And so, like, hammering home this like what advantage can you give your kid is make sure every time they step on the ice that they have good, reliable edges. Because everything else builds from there. Like, if the coach is having them do like this drill or that drill or this acceleration or this, if they don't have edges to rely on, there is such a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

When the other half of this is consistency, all right. And one of the things, and I'm I'm gonna say this, this annoys me as a coach. I'll go to a uh a mom or dad. Hey, when was the last time you had their skate sharpened? Oh, like a month ago. And I'm like, well, we've been on the ice a lot over the last month, and it's like, well, you know, we're just waiting for them to dull. That's right here. I'm waiting for them to dull out and then we'll get a sharpen. I'm like, yeah, I don't I actually don't recommend that. Yeah, I think I think you've missed that with you want you want consistency of sharpening. Now, do you have to do them after every skate? Absolutely not, right? You don't have to do that. I mean, some players do them after every period, obviously at the NHL level. But my point is that like I'm looking for consistency because what you do is when you let the ball, you're not giving the kid consistency to learn how to use those edges, right? I mean, look, my my son's a goaltender. Uh, we don't have the uh luxury of him not having his edges in the net. If he loses his edge in the net, we're having a bad day. It doesn't you you think it's bad as a forward or a defenseman. If the goalie can't skate, you're having a bad day.

SPEAKER_04 37:33

All right. An analogy I was just thinking of, again, never even used this before, but because again, there are parents that they're not the ones skating, so they can't, it's very hard for them to understand it. And when the skates get sharpened is when it's like almost convenient for them. Like, oh, well, I wasn't planning to go over there where the skate shop is until next week.

SPEAKER_03 37:55

Right.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

It'd be like so to someone who doesn't skate, it'd be like if I removed the steering wheel from your car. That's that's what not having edges does. It basically go without a steering wheel, you'd you'd go, you'd be able to back out of your garage and then right off a cliff.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Like I think, I think uh, I think a uh a note to take away, right, is you can't schedule your skate sharpening. Like it is what it is. Like it's and I think you know, when I talk to parents, like it's it's funny how like blade sharpening, skate sharpening of blades is so it's actually behind a lot of other industries, right? I mean, like uh uh you know, if you're a football player, you knew that you would wear different cleats and you would I mean the technology of you know wearing, like when you're wearing your cleats, whether you're wearing high or lows or deep or hollow, like those are depending on field conditions. My family my wife's family's all skiers. Like there's they'd be shocked if I didn't if I didn't sharpen and wax my skis, I look like a whole different skier. Like I literally, if you take your skis out of the garage and you throw them on once a year and you ski down a mountain, you will not ski as well. You'll almost feel like a skier if you get them sharpened and waxed. Like, oh my god, like this is that that's the light bulb. So I think you know, in the world of skate sharpening, going back to like how the parents can't feel your feet as a child, you don't know sometimes until you know. Like you don't even realize that the skates were dull until you get them sharpened. And I think this is where um the ability to have a the technology there to say I not only can I flip my blades out on a regular basis, whether they're sharp or dull, I don't have to wait. It's my schedule, but I can also then adapt to the kid that hits the goalpost with a skate, and it's the you literally the whistle blows, the kid can skate over, you pop a piece of steel out and pop a steel in, and they're playing again. There is no, like, and I think Russ, that was you what you were saying, right? The anxiety as a parent sitting in a stand saying, this kid's got to sit here for another 45 minutes, unable to move across the crease. Like to me, I don't know, that's worth a lot to me. Like, that's worth a lot of of getting that out of my um, you know, my worry piece.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

But it doesn't have to exist anymore. Like it doesn't have to be a worry anymore. Yeah, so like I'll not cut you off. It's like we don't have to have that worry problem. Yeah, yeah, we've solved it. It like that that's what makes me kind of nuts.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

Um I have another question about ice conditions and if that can affect how your edges feel. Because you know, families travel from rink to rink. Sometimes the ice is hard, sometimes it's soft. And I can remember uh my daughter complaining one time the ice was very soft. I need to get my skate sharpened. We just got your skate sharpened. My edges don't feel right. Is it can it can that play a role?

SPEAKER_04 40:51

Yeah, oh it does at the very highest level. They're you know, they actually test the ice and they may alter skate sharpenings for those for very small changes in temperature.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

Huh.

SPEAKER_04 41:02

The general rule, and anybody that's ever played pawn hockey will tell you like the more kind of humid and moist and um uh less cold the ice is, the less edges really matter. So, like you can go out and play a weekend pawn hockey tournament, like with pretty banged up edges because you're just kind of walking on the ice anyway. The ice is so soft, you can kind of dig in without much effort.

unknown 41:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Um, and then the harder the ice goes, the more critical edges are, I would say. Um, but for most rinks, like unless you are playing pond hockey in like terribly humid, hot, warmer weather, most rinks you're you're in the band of ice temperature that a skate sharpening is critical. You can go out with the skate sharpening that you're most comfortable with. Um, and then I was thinking of another point in that last conversation we were just having, which is I wonder if there's probably an age range, Lee, like you were suggesting, like in this like eight to 10 or somewhere in there, where I don't there, there's a possibility that kids at that age don't know if they're having like an off day or they're tired or not feeling right. Like they're falling, and I don't know if they can verbalize that the reason why they're having trouble in this game or this practice is because an edge is lost. Yeah, like that may be a lot to put on a kid to kind of whereas when you get older, you know, like you're like, I turn this way, I go down. If you're six years old, you might just be like, I don't know, mom or dad. I just I'm having an off day, you know, and then you get the crazy parents that are like, I, you know, we paid for this camp. We need you to focus, we need you to get to bed on time, we need you to eat right. That's why we told you to get up. Like, they might just have a lost edge.

SPEAKER_02 42:52

Yeah, you know, it's funny you bring that up, yeah. As a coach, you know, we can usually tell. And I'll tell you how I can tell is because when I have a player that doesn't usually fall down and they're only falling on their left side, yeah. To me, that's like, hey, when was the last time you got their skate sharpened? Or I might ask the kid, hey, did you step on the bench? Did you step on like or my favorite one in youth youth hockey, young hockey, is I'll be on the bench and I'll hear this like clang, clang, clang, and I look down and the kids smacking a steel against the steel on the bench underneath the bench. Right? A lot of times I'll just look and I'll kind of nod my head and be like, okay, that's not gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Try working in a rink your whole life, and after like the Zamboni gets out to do the ice in between sessions at a public session, every member of the public session is walking into the into the stands or the concrete. Oh, yeah. And you're just like, like, this is gonna be a long night.

SPEAKER_02 43:43

But I I think they got signs up saying not to do that, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 43:46

No, it doesn't matter. They move those signs. But Russ, I do miss, I do miss the bliss of not knowing, right? I I think I I miss the ability to say, uh, it doesn't matter if I skated three hours on the pond on Saturday, and then my son had a game Sunday morning at the at the iceplex, you know, with the brand new ice and the and the and the treated, you know, chemically uh, you know, uh leveled ice uh resurfacer. So can you just talk about like what would you say to a parent? Like, if you just want to say, I want to keep my blades sharp, I want to keep my blades in great condition for the longest possible time, what are some things we can do as parents that would extend um and and put ourselves in a really and put our kids in a good place uh to get good habits about maintaining their blades?

SPEAKER_04 44:33

Um without this sounding super self-promotional for Sparks, um it's gonna be hard. Um because I have access to the product, right? As any one of our you know customers does, you know, and I'm putting in the effort, I play two or three times a week. And I it's gonna sound crazy, and I'm not a professional hockey player by any stretch. I always sharpen my skates. I put two cycles, two to three, on my skates every single time I play because I mean, obviously, I'm in a different situation than a customer is in terms of having to pay for it, but even I was paying for it, maybe it's 50 cents. Maybe, maybe, and like to know that, like, I'm gonna go put in this effort to get there, to get change, to get on the ice, to invest the time. Like, it's such a small insurance policy on such a big investment of time to be ready for it. And it takes it takes like two minutes. And so, in the time I take my bag and put it in the car, I've eliminated that anxiety around, like, oh, I wonder if my last skate, did I how did I feel? Did I feel like I had a good edge? Because I will play, because I play a lot, I will occasionally not sharpen them on the way out. And I'll be like, how was that last skate? How did I feel? And so I eliminate all those questions. Um, it's like any, you know, any sort of person that has a compulsive, you know, behavioral thing, like you take your keys out and you put them by the door. You like, there's there's things in your life that will create anxiety, and I can eliminate all of that pre-scate anxiety by putting two cycles.

SPEAKER_00 46:23

I think I think that I think that one point when you have access, right? Like me, I have access to limited rolls of tape. I mean, I literally retape my stick every single time I use it. It's just something I do, like it's a habit. But I think for for uh other people, even if you have a sharpener home, I mean I look at like I look at the the culture of figure skating. Like you will not see a figure skater have a pair of skates if they're not standing on the ice without a skate guard and without their blades being dry, right? And I think it's because there's there's there's there's there's a piece in the figure skating community in that culture that there's certain gurus of sharpening figure skates, and they have to go to them because that goes back to the point of now you have to schedule your life around somebody else and what their technology brings or what their expertise brings. And I think that's like my I guess that was really my question was more like a player coming into the ring. You know, how important and maybe just even for the life of the boot and the life of the of the the tuck and all the mechanics and everything, and and the blade itself, the steel. I mean, you know, getting skate guards, drying your skates, you know, feel you know, treating your skates as if they're not just a piece of equipment you throw in the bottom of the bag wet, right? And then the next practice you take three days later, you take them out.

SPEAKER_04 47:37

Always take I take the footbeds out every single time because if you leave if you leave that footbed in there full of water, um it's gonna rot the skate out, all those rivets holding on the hot the skate, the blade holder itself, the white part typically. Um I do I use soft covers because uh my my skates are not really in covers for very long. They're in covers when I when I get done sharpening, I put a skate soaker on them. They go in my bag, I dress with the skate soaker on, then I take the skate soaker off, I walk to the ice, I play, I come back. I actually don't even put the skate soaker on when I put them in my bag. Probably could. And then I get home, I dry the blades, take out the footbeds, and hang them back up again. Excellent. I think leaving like hard, hard guards on there for very long is gonna rust stuff out. Um I'm glad you mentioned.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

I see that all the time. I see so many families just put the hard guards on, throw it in the bag, and they don't even completely dry it. Like, why are you rotting your blades? Okay, you're spending all this money on these good blades, you're getting them sharpened, but that littlest thing, the maintaining is so important.

SPEAKER_04 48:55

Yeah, keeping keeping your skates dry is not being done.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Well, it's so funny, and I I almost I almost think about it a little like a little differently, too, is like what Russ, like, I love your routine, Russ. And we've actually had a whole episode about routines like this, like just about like you know when you come home if you forgot anything, and you know before you leave if you're gonna forget anything, because it wouldn't be anything on the rack. Like you look at the rack, like, oh, everything's filled on the rack, and then I leave, oh, everything's off the rack. So I think it's one of those easy, easy things to to build. And we've had a whole episode on just you know, when do you get your kids to start taking care of their own equipment and getting themselves dressed and things? I think that's a great uh piece of it that you know your child understanding, like, oh wow, okay, by the way, these skates are three, four, eight hundred thousand dollars, they're gonna last longer, uh, they're gonna be in better condition, you're gonna feel more comfortable in them. And wow, if you have a sparks machine at home, imagine be able to come home, you pop your blades out, you sharpen them, you put them back in your skate, and you're ready for the next game, like almost like a like a fireman. Like you're you're ready to go. The bell goes off, you throw your stuff in, you go. And I think it's just like one of those things where it makes your life so much easier and and controlled because we all know that once all the other uncontrollables are there, this is something we can actually take control of and have the technology to use it.

SPEAKER_02 50:10

Yeah, and I'm gonna get to this now because I know the people out there are asking, and and Russ, but I do uh appreciate your uh, you know, you understand you're a guest here and you're trying not to sell your product. I'll sell your product for you for the people listening here because I think it's important that they understand. I think it's the number one question I get about sparks and at-home sharpening is like, is it worth it? And I tell people it's a pretty simple equation, all right. Um, if you have follow me here, if you have one skater in your house, you just have to do the uh the math on how long you think they're gonna play, how often you're sharpening their skates. I think we've proven today that needs to be probably a little more often than you think, and just do the math of this is what a uh a skate sharpener costs for my house, this is what it's gonna cost at the rank, and you do that math. Now, if you've got three, four, five skaters in your house, um, this thing pays itself off in less than a season. All right, and I've done the math on this. You can do it too. You just have to do how many times you're getting these skate sharpen. Uh, and that's just the financial piece. I'm not even talking about peace of mind, consistency of sharpening, and the the advancements that continually happen with these machines. And again, Sparks uh Russell, sorry, Sparks is what disrupted this in the first place. So thanks for that. No, joking aside, like it's been a wonderful disruption, right? The way we've been aware now of skate sharpening. You said it at the top of the episode how aware you became of these things. I think we all are now. So I'm gonna say this again: if you're listening to this show, you're clearly a family that's invested in this game, both literally and figuratively. This is a worthy investment for your home, especially if you have multiple skaters in the house. All right. I I mean that that that's the part of this the conversation that boggles my mind. It's like, what are you waiting for? That's the case. I'm gonna make sure we say this again. This is not a paid advertising episode. I'm saying this from from my heart right now. Okay, yeah, we we invited Russell on to talk about skate sharpening, but I gotta I gotta tell you, the consistency alone for me and my kids of knowing exactly what I'm getting. That was the first thing I noticed when I got a a Sharper Sparks machine in my house. Was wow, every time I step on the ice now, it is exactly the same. Yeah, every single time. I could not say that with confidence when I was going to a different person. If you if you had a guy or a woman that did them consistently every time, your person, you might get that feeling. But the truth is, you're gonna be at a weight ranks, you're gonna be at different places. This solved the problem. Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_04 52:34

I think two more data points for you, just to like I think everything you said is 100% accurate. Um, I think an interesting observation is so we have like over a little over 125,000 consumers have this product. That's a that's a lot of people. It's like yeah, three stadiums full of consumers that own this product. Um, and so one when we go to a show like um let's play hockey in Minnesota, where I mean, the number, the percentage of people that don't own Sparks is actually uh smaller than the percentage of people that do. It's like every day, yeah. So we will invariably we will be talking to somebody that doesn't own the product, and somebody that does own the product will come over, and the person will be doing math and stuff like you're doing. Like, oh, how do I justify this? And the person that owns it will come over and say, I did the same thing and I waited too long. Right, exactly. It is absolutely not about saving money, and this is this is thousands of people will say, once you own this, all of those thoughts about saving money kind of go out the window. That's a good point because the convenience and the reliability and how how much time of your life you get back, how much happier your kids are, like that trumps everything, but it can't prevent human nature before you own it to be like, oh, I've got three people once a week, blah, blah, blah. So, one data point is every pretty much everyone that owns it says it has nothing to do with the money once they own it. And you'd have to like kill them to get the product out of their hands because they would never give it up. Um, so that's one point. Uh, what was the the other one that I wanted to mention? Ah, shoot. Well, why are you thinking about it?

SPEAKER_00 54:22

I'll jump in, though, just because I I I had I had been a Sparks user, you know, owner. I mean, I bought my first Sparks for my team. And it was because I said, I'm buying a Sparks machine. I'm gonna buy 15 different rings. Uh, and and each family ha owns their own. So I think that was like at the time, I don't know, it was like $60 or something. Like, so each family would buy their own. Again, I I was kind of like I geeked out about it. I'm like, listen, I got this thing in my garage, don't worry about it. You know, those like what Russ was saying, like the technology that the blades could pop out. I didn't need any stinky boots in my house, I would just take your blades and then we'd sharpen them and I'd give your blades back. And I think it, you know, for me, like I didn't even pay for the machine, really. The machine just paid for itself in one day by collecting by collecting one sharpening fee from every family. So that part was easy. But I think, you know, from somebody who's in a lot of different um uh ICE program uh arena programs and a lot of different organizations, the ones that are now using the Sparks commercial machines and the ability to say, listen, if you don't even own your own machine, right, but you have the ability now to take three sets of steel to somebody you know is going to have the same sharpening every single time, though that set of steel goes in there. Because again, not everybody can put a Sparks machine in their house. Not everybody has the access to say, well, do I really like do I really need the convenience? But I think you know, be able to go to uh a consumer that uses this product or and and and the technology and say, hey, here's my three sets of steel, sharpen them up, they're the exact same every single time, and they're at level, and then they take them with them, right? So it's the same kind of idea of being able to go to the one stuff, the one place that has the cons, and I think it comes right, it keeps coming back to consistency. I want to be able to pop my blades in in the first period and change my blades in the second, and it's the exact same blade, the exact same feel, and I don't have to worry about it anymore. And I think that's such a huge peace of mind for coaches, parents, players, especially. Um, it just brings the technology to a place where like there really isn't an excuse to be at any level of hockey with blades that aren't ready to play.

SPEAKER_04 56:28

I'll I'll add something, Mike. You said you've had the product for a really long time. We were really proud of ourselves because the other day we we searched on eBay just to see what you know Sparks machines were out there, and a generation one machine that was that was produced like two months after our Kickstarter ended, sold for more than the person paid for it when they bought it on the Kickstarter. So that's a 10-year-old machine that the person made money on selling. So I know it comes into my calculus. Like, if you do go into the math, like I remember buying some big fancy lawnmower that I shared with a neighbor, and we eventually like it went into my thoughts, was like, hey, if this is a totally bad idea, I can always sell it and recoup some of my cost. And not like I'm trying to compete with my own products that we sell from our website, but like if I was a parent going, like, oh, should I buy this? I guarantee you, if you buy it, you'll never sell it. But just know in the back of your head, you could go on eBay and probably sell it, you know, three months from now if it's a bad idea for what you paid for it.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Yeah, it's a testament to the quality for sure. And again, Russ, I'm glad that you brought up the the points that you made, right? Because again, the equations on why or how or how much money it takes is trumped by the consistency and the quality um and the and the stress relief that it it creates. So I would just say this if you're a serious hockey family, this is part of you being serious.

unknown 58:01

Right.

SPEAKER_02 58:02

That's not what I would say.

SPEAKER_04 58:03

And I think in five or ten years, this we will be looking back at this episode laughing because this has gone from in the beginning when we started the company, that you know, no very few people believed we could do what we were saying we could do. Like there was like this like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna build the courig of skate sharpeners that's in your house, and you press a button and you get skate sharpened. And everybody talked about like these old vending machines and rinks, and it was like impossible for us to raise money because of that precedent that had been set. And and it was it was you know, like a fantasy, like we were gonna have sparks. And now, 10 years later, like a lot of people have this. And I think 10 more years, this will be this will be just every family has a sharpener or their neighbor does. It won't be something like we're talking about now, which is like you should go do this. It will, this will be a you know, a conversation we're not having in five or 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

And Rouse, what do you see in the next couple of years as far as skate technology? Where do you see it headed? What's in the works for Sparks?

SPEAKER_04 59:10

So for Sparks, you know, we continue to innovate around the sharpener. We have um now our products are intelligent, smart. Um, and so we have different features that are soon to be launched on the sharpener that will retroactively make everyone who owns a connected Sparks machine have those additional features. Um, so we'll continue to make the features expanded. We'll probably be working on lighter machines, smaller machines, different uh price point machines, continuing to research uh skate sharpening itself as a technology. What things can we do to the blade to increase speed on the ice? We do a lot of research um around hollows, around profiles, um looking to improve performance. And then there's a lot of changes coming um right now. You have we have a new entrant with Warrior now has a skate, um, and they hadn't had it historically, and True has a new owner. And so I think there's a lot of competitiveness in the skate industry. We've seen a lot of expansion in blade technology, people have blades of different materials, different coatings. And so we'll continue to stay on top of that, make sure our sharpeners can handle everything that all these manufacturers are throwing into the market.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:28

Well, you had mentioned about how a lot of people have this. Just for those of you listening, people have it. I've seen teams have it, I've seen Pro Shops have it, I've seen professional teams have it. When my national team goes on the road, which is often, we have a Sparks machine with us somewhere where the players can get their skate sharpened. All right. And um, you know, the goal with the episode today was to educate all of you on skate sharpening. And I think we've absolutely accomplished that. I mean, Russ, I do want to throw it to you one more time for if they're leaving this episode and there's just one piece of advice, right? Like, okay, you've convinced me that this is important, what would that piece of advice be for the listener?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:06

It's kind of where we start in the beginning. Make sure every time your your player, you or your player goes out that you've, you know, you you've either just recently done a skate sharpening or you've checked those edges. Um, because if you have a really young player, they may not know they've lost an edge. Um, because it's the foundation of everything. And the only way that you really maintain edges is to have sort of like unfettered access to a skate sharpener because you can lose your edge at any point. And the next time you're going to be on the ice may not be a convenient moment for you to get the sharpening in between. And so, you know, I built this machine to solve a very personal the time problem that I wanted the ability to sharpen skates at any moment because I was losing edges at inconvenient times. And I think now we've created a product that's universal and everybody can own it. And I think, you know, we've talked about it all through this episode. If you don't have sharp, reliable edges, everything else is kind of a waste of time at that point.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:13

You're a disruptor and an innovator, my friend. Yeah, what was that, Christy?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:18

It's never at a convenient moment, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:20

No, no. Yeah, maybe if you win a championship and step off into the concrete with the Stanley Cup in your hands, that would be the only convenient time to ruin your edges.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:29

Uh back back to my analogy. Like, when's it convenient that we pull the steering wheel off your car?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:35

Exactly. That was a great analogy. Thank you, Russ.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:38

I'll say this to the parents listening. If you're nodding your heads at home, don't worry, Russ is going to join us on a ride to the ring. So he'll talk directly to your kids about this as well. But uh, Mike and Christy, anything before I close this out?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Well, this was a great episode. I'm so glad you were able to share all your knowledge and expertise and insight. Um, you know, it's one of those things that you're really it's kind of the last thing you think about as a hockey family. You're worried about what kind of skates to get, all the equipment, um, the techniques that your kids are learning. And it's so basic, but so essential. The edge, it's everything, parent. So pay attention, get educated, and you're really gonna see a huge difference in the way that your kids skate if you get the edges right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:22

Yeah, I think I think from my perspective, I've said this to every customer I've ever had. If you go to if you are going to power skating classes and specialty clinics, and you're and you're not taking care of your edges, and if you're a power skating coach out there and you're not asking your kids about their sharpening their edges, you're really just taking their money. I don't care. I there's no excuse to me. There's no reason why players should not know that they're getting on the ice with level, sharpened steel that's gonna enhance their performance. And if you're paying $800, $900,000 for uh, you know, in two weeks to go to a hockey camp and you have you know with blades that aren't sharp, then you're just you're just wasting your money and you're and you're and you're in you're you're actually just putting a lot of stress on your player. Uh, just you know, again, it's a very simple thing to do, it's a very simple investment to make, whether you're going out and getting it done in a quality sharpening uh, you know, person, or you get your own machine, just get those blades, you know, dialed in and re get your return on your investment.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

Well, when we were talking about this episode, I'll end it on this. Uh, Christy sent the whole team a message that this is going to be a sharp cutting edge episode. All right. And I told her to get a certainly not dull. Not dull at all. No, there you go. So that for that, I think we'll end it on that one. That's this has been a good episode of Our Kids Play Hockey. Look, if you've got questions about skate sharpening, email us team at our kidsplayhockey.com. We'll forward them to Russ to get the answers, just in case we don't have them. Uh remember, you can always text us using the description. Uh, sorry, the there's a link in the description for this episode where you can text us anything you want there at once. Uh, and we'll get back to you. But for Russell Layton from Sparks Hockey, Chris Decash and O Burns, Mike Vinelli, I'm Leah Lies. We will see you all on the next episode of Our Kids Play Hockey. Take care, everybody. We hope you enjoyed this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey. Make sure to like and subscribe right now if you found value wherever you're listening, whether it's a podcast network, a social media network, or our website, our kidsplayhockey.com. Also, make sure to check out our children's book, When Hockey Stops, at When Hockey Stops.com. It's a book that helps children deal with adversity in the game and in life. We're very proud of it. But thanks so much for listening to this edition of Our Kids Play Hockey, and we'll see you on the next episode.