Santos L Halper

This goes for everyone, regardless of gender.... Particularly recently, a disturbing trend in youth hockey in the States has been to jump way too quickly from coaching the technical fundamentals to ATTEMPTING to coach "system play". I've seen/heard way too many 8U - 10U coaches brag about how they've taught their teams to 'trap' or 'weak-side-lock' or whatever. Honestly, what a load of solid waste from a male bovine. At those levels, we should be focused on teaching our teams to skate, pass, handle pucks, shoot, and compete. Sure, they also need to learn simple team concepts such as defensive zone coverage and breakouts; but wasting precious ice time teaching a complex, overarching 'system' to younger players only stunts their skill development and creativity. I had a long, drawn out argument with a 10UBB parent at the start of this season - he was adamant that I should be teaching 'system play' to the team. I demurred and tried to deflect the conversation to a different tack. Of course, he was groin-grabbingly persistent - even in the face of my obvious reluctance to 'go there', so I finally flat out refused and said the following: "Shawn, I would waste the entire season trying to teach this group of 9 year olds how to trap and then transition to an aggressive 2-2-1 forecheck...and most of them STILL wouldn't 'get it'. Instead, we're going to work on skating, passing, shooting, and competing. And we're going to work on those 4 things again and again. And again. And we'll work on them next year. And all through pee-wees, too. Then, when they're 13 and 14, they'll (a) be mentally ready for 'system play', and (b) be able to execute the fundamentals well enough that we can teach a 'system' in about 45 minutes...instead of wasting an entire season." He was unconvinced. Until last week, when he came up to me, shook my hand, and told me that his daughter had improved more this year than she had in any year before now. He didn't tell me that I was right about the systems thing...but he didn't have to.

Just wanted to say that I love this idea and am weirdly excited to be the first one posting here.... Hopefully other coaches will join in and create a cool forum where we can exchange ideas, give feedback, and generally help us become better coaches and ambassadors of the game. Also...I hope that, in time, this can become a place where players, parents, and friends can come and get answers to general questions that they may not otherwise be able (or willing...) to ask their coach. (Please note that I emphasize 'general' in the above, because there's no way anyone here can give answers to specific questions pertaining to individual teams or situations that we're not part of. Put differently, it's unreasonable to ask how to approach your kid's coach about putting Jimmy, Mikey, and Bobby on the same line. Without actually coaching Jimmy, Mikey, and Bobby's team, no one on an internet forum can hope to give an answer to something that, ultimately, should be left to the coach's prerogative...) Anyway. Personally, I'm a full-time youth/minor hockey coach, currently coaching club 8UA, 10UBB and A, and assistant coaching 14UA and 16UA. Previously, I've coached 14U Tier 1 AAA, 12U Tier 2 AA, and local high school hockey; but have taken time away from the more travel-intensive teams to concentrate on building our club's younger levels. (Plus, I have an 8 year old, and having to miss more games of his than I attended wasn't working for me anymore...) Other coaches, jump in! Sound off! Let's go! It's state tournament time...how are your teams looking???

Absolutely! Glad you're seeing results!

I sharpen skates for a bunch of my kid's teammates, a few of my fellow coaches, and a fair number of other guys around and I've definitely noticed that some steel burrs more than others. I've always been able to deburr adequately, but being a nerd at heart, I got interested in this phenomenon and started poking around on the internet and found the weird world of hobbyist knife makers. Those guys are fanatical about steel and go into agonizing detail about it; which, closet nerd or not, turns out to not be all that interesting unless you have a burning passion for chemistry and metallurgy. Anyway, I learned that, all other things being equal, some compositions of steel are simply more prone to developing edge burr than others. Since we can't exactly change the formulation of our skate steel, there's nothing we can really DO about it as skate sharpeners/Sparx operators - we just have to deal with it. In general, I've found that if you sharpen with fewer passes more frequently, you'll deal with WAY fewer burrs than if you're running a bunch of passes, less frequently. Put differently, since you've found the Step burrs more easily than the LS2, consider sharpening twice as often with 1/2 the passes. That way, any burr that forms will be smaller and easier to deal with. Sparx has a good writeup on its website about burrs - worth a read if you haven't already... http://blogs.sparxhockey.com/how-burrs-occur-on-skate-steel-and-how-to-mitigate-them

I do both. For touchups/quick sharpens (3 or fewer passes), I put toe right. If I'm doing 4 or more passes or ESPECIALLY if I'm sharpening new steel, I will do two with toe-right, then switch to toe-left, and continue alternating every two passes until I'm happy with the edge. YMMV, of course, but it's worked for me so far.

+1. In fact, the Sparx manual for the edge checker specifically says that some coatings may make it impossible to get an accurate edge checker reading. This is why I neither use nor recommend coated steel.

Additionally, if there WERE some way that you could get "your guy" anytime you wanted, there's still no way you can guarantee that he isn't tired, or injured, or super-busy, or pissed that he scratched the new Volvo while on his way back from lunch, or too focused on the exploits of the North Korean Olympic Short Track Team, or just 'not mentally there' that day.... I've said it before and I'll say it again: The whole point of the Sparx is that it takes the unpredictable human element out of the skate sharpening equation. For people like you (and me - I'm in Southern California), who happen to live where "good" sharpenings are harder to come by, that's a HUGE benefit. For others that have ready access to quality sharpening, maybe it's not such of a big deal. But, simply not having to worry about it is what makes a Sparx worth it for the hundreds (thousands?) of people who've purchased one.

1. Okay. If you say so. 2. No. They don't.

Yeah, 15-20 sharpenings if manual sharpening is done correctly! If done INCORRECTLY, traditional manual sharpening will alter the profile FAR quicker. It is physically impossible for a human being to ALWAYS put consistent, even pressure on a skate blade when using a manual machine. On every skate sharpened, there will be spots where the operator will move a bit slower, or push a bit harder...it's just how the human body works. Add inexperience, worn down grinding wheels, poor equipment maintenance protocols, and you can see how manual sharpenings can be so wildly unpredictable. The Sparx takes the human variable out of the equation and you get consistent, predictable results. It ain't cheap...but good things rarely are. So, yeah. If you get a Prosharp Quad profile, Sparx will maintain it through the life of the blade.

Sounds like you're in my neck of the woods (Orange County, CA). You're right. Monkey and Pure don't profile - they recommend Ultimate Skate & Hockey at Anaheim Ice for that service. However, USH is really more of a figure skating shop and does NOT have a Prosharp or a Blademaster. It's just James on the stand-up Wyssota. He can adjust pitch and radius (to an extent), but good luck getting him to give you hard data on what he did. I'm seriously considering investing in a ProSharp AS2001 and starting a mobile sharpening/profiling business....seems the market may be ripe for it...

I too use a marker when making hollow changes, however I'm not sure that it's entirely accurate - or, as you said, perhaps it doesn't tell the whole story. Thinking about it from a 10,000 foot level, I could see where you could scrape enough steel to get the marker off, but still not enough to get an accurate hollow. My personal experience is that I've had guys tell me that hollow changes kinda felt like an "in between" sharpening. Since I'll (usually) adjust until they're happy, I've found that I wind up making 10 (+/-) passes when I do a hollow change. Keep in mind, it could all be in the heads of the guys I'm sharpening for. The guys that give me the most grief are former pros that are used to having an equipment manager that obsesses over this stuff, so I'm not sure they entirely trust me or the new-fangled technological wonder I have sitting in my garage.

I know. See my earlier post where I mentioned that their commercial sharpener is now the only way to get cross-grinding capability. Also (and maybe this is just me...), but that seems an awfully steep jump in price for the additions of automatic grinding wheel hight adjustment, cross-grinding capability, and a $90.00 mini-canister vacuum (the vacuum is included with the PS-100). All of the above being said, make no mistake, despite my frustration with this, I love my Sparx sharpener. What's more, the people I sharpen skates for love it as well. My complaint here is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor. I live in Southern California where we don't always have access to a "good" manual sharpening. Even from the large box stores (Hockey Monkey and Pure Hockey) with the supposed "experts" running the Wysotta, the sharpenings are woefully inconsistent and groin-grabbingly expensive. The Sparx solves all that and I'm kicking myself that I didn't make the investment earlier. I just wish I could attach my shop-vac to the thing.

Truth. Which is (IMHO, anyway...) indicative of the one major design flaw of the Sparx consumer machine: There is no provision whatsoever to attach a vacuum/dust collector to the unit. Despite the weird promo video of the Sparx unit whirring away on the kitchen counter while the kids do their homework in the background, I'm willing to wager that the VAST majority of consumers have these machines set up in their basements or garages. You know, places where they are also likely to have access to a shopvac with a 2.5" nozzle - a tool which just so happens to be tailor-made to suck fine-grained steel detritus out of a relatively small enclosed space. Seriously. A 2.5" port in the back of the unit would (a) allow the use of a cross-grinding ring, and (b) obviate the need to replace a $16.00 filter. Why hasn't this been done, yet? What's that? Oh, Sparx doesn't want to lose the revenue from filter sales? Fine. Then make the vacuum port an option and charge an extra $50 for a unit that has one. I sharpen skates for several players that change their hollows based on the hardness of the ice they're playing on next - if I had a cross-grind ring and my shop vac hooked up to my sharpener, I could get done in 3-4 passes, what it takes a 'regular' grinding ring 10+ passes to do...

They do, but only hollow-specific cross-grind wheels for their higher end commercial machine, the PS-100. (Starts at ~$2K...)