Do your hockey skates really grip the ice? Is it possible that your skates are too sharp?
There is no such thing as hockey skates that are too sharp. If you feel like your skates are gripping into the ice too much that probably means the hollow on your skates is too deep. The hollow of your blade, or very technically the radius of hollow (RoH) refers to the depth of the groove between your inner and outer edges on your skate blades. A deeper groove means more grip. A standard hollow at most shops is ½”. A more shallow hollow is a 1” and a deeper hollow is ⅜”.
There are benefits to each type of hollow which we will cover in this article but the simple answer to the question of “can my hockey skates be too sharp?” is no, your skates can not be too sharp.
Why Do I Feel Like My Hockey Skates Are Too Sharp?
It is not possible for your hockey skates to be too sharp.
It is a good thing for your hockey skates to be as sharp as possible. Sometimes with a fresh sharpening, you can feel like you grip the ice too much or catch an edge a lot easier than before. Often times this is not because your skates are too sharp, it’s more likely that the hollow on your skates has been cut a little deeper than before.
If you have a really deep hollow this allows each of your edges to sink lower into the ice. This can cause you to catch an edge more because you are actually gripping the ice more. The radius of your hollow is the amount of space between your outside and inside edges. This space is in a “u” shape. Take a look at the chart below to get a better picture of what I’m actually talking about.
You can see as you go steeper, say to a ⅜” your edges are digging in quite a bit more than a ¾”.
Most pro shops will give you a standard cut of a ½” . This is a good middle ground.
There are pros and cons to each kind of hollow, it all depends on what you are looking for. As you move closer to a ⅜” you are gaining a lot more grip on the ice. This allows you to stop harder, make tighter turns, and feel your edges better. This is all great, but with this extra grip, you do sacrifice speed.
As you move closer to a 1” hollow you gain a lot more speed because your skates can more easily glide on the ice. A shallow hollow is not the best for beginners because it does make it difficult to feel your edges.
If the shop accidentally gave you a shallow hollow on your skates you might think that your skates aren’t sharp enough.
How Can You Tell If Hockey Skates Are Sharp?
The best way to tell if your skates are sharp enough is to actually skate with them. Do the blades dig into the ice? Can you push off and actually grip the ice? Do you hear that satisfying crunch sound while turning sharp? These are all signs that you have sharp skates
If you are not sure if your blades are sharp but do not want to test it in a game a good off-ice test is to take your finger and slowly rub it down the blade, you are feeling for any knicks or dings in the skate blade. Be sure to do this slow, if you go too fast you can cut your finger.
Another simple way to tell if your skates are sharp or not is to take your thumbnail and quickly rub it on your edges in a downward motion. If you have sharp hockey skates it should scrape a little bit of your nail off.
How Do I Make My Skates Less Sharp?
Like I said before, there is no such thing as hockey skates that are too sharp but if you insist on dulling your blades there are a few ways that you can do that.
The first one and probably the most obvious one is to just skate with them. As you skate your blades will naturally dull.
If you want to speed up this process but don’t want to buy a hand stone, you can use the hard plastic underneath the board doors. Be sure to double-check that there are no metal screws that you could knick your blades on.
Take your blades and apply even pressure as you rub your blades back and forth on that hard plastic a few times. After that skate around and see if you notice a difference.
The last thing you can do to dull your hockey blades is to take a hand stone and rub it back and forth a few times. These are designed to clean up knicks and dings in your blade but they will also slightly dull your edges.
Whatever you do, do not walk on hard surfaces like concrete or metal.
How Do You Know If My Skates Are Dull?
You will know that you have dull hockey skates when you are sliding all of the ice a lot more than normal. If you find yourself losing edges more often than normal or not being able to grip the ice when pushing off you probably have dull skate blades.
Is It Possible For Hockey Skates To Be Too Sharp?
I do not believe that your hockey skates can be too sharp. It is a good thing to have sharp hockey skates. You can group the ice better, top harder, turn tighter, and push off harder. There are tons of benefits to having sharp skates.
If you just got your hockey skates sharpened and you are suddenly catching your edges a lot, or gripping the ice a lot more than normal it’s probably not because your edges are too sharp, it’s more than likely that the hollow on your skate blades is deeper than before.
A deeper hollow allows your blades to actually sink lower into the ice.
If you want to try and take the edge off of your blades a little bit you can always suck it up and skate a game or two with them until they dull a little bit or you can use the hard plastic underneath the doors on the boards. Evenly apply pressure and rub your skate blades back and forth a few times on it. Make sure to double-check for screws or anything that could damage your blades.