Personal skate sharpening machines; a matter of dollars and sense

The way European sharpening system manufacturer Prosharp sees it, the North American skate sharpening business is ripe for a shake-up, and the company says it has just the thing to make it happen.

The Sundsvall, Sweden-based company is trying to create a new market for personal skate sharpening machines with its new SkatePal unit. Through its representation in Canada and the US, Eriksson Sport Technologies Inc. of Toronto, Prosharp has its eyes set squarely on hockey players and parents throughout North America. Not pro shops or even pro teams, but actual end users--players from the minor hockey ages to scholastic teams to adult recreational leagues.

SkatePal is a portable sharpening machine, weighing just 22 pounds and measuring 24 by 10 by 12 inches, which can sharpen a pair of skates in less than three minutes.

“We’re targeting the players, coaches and parents,” Eriksson says. “It’s a completely new concept that opens up that market.”

Like the name SkatePal implies, proper and consistent sharpening is a hockey player’s best friend. Unfortunately, that is not always the case with some commercial sharpening services in the retail and pro shop environments.
“If you have your own machine you can spoil yourself with perfect sharpening with perfect edges before every game and practice,” says Eriksson. “Here (in North America), it’s more like a gamble going from pro shop to pro shop trying to find the magic sharpener.”

Prosharp says it is the market leader in Europe, supplying its full size units to the Swedish, Finnish and Russian national teams. The European hockey community has a better understanding of skate sharpening, says Eriksson, where skates are often profiled with more blade-to-ice contact. In North America, too many players use ‘banana’ blades, which are conducive to agility but at the cost of some speed. Prosharp suggests a combined radius in one profile, with sharp toes and plenty of steel-to-ice contact in middle of the blade.

With the SkatePal, users clamp the skate in place, and the grinding wheel automatically follows the existing profile to precision, with no variation, Prosharp says. Quick-changeable grinding wheels are good for sharpening 150 pairs.

Eriksson has set up a demo shop at Iceland Arena, a four-pad complex in Mississauga, Ont. to sell the machines at C$2,400 each.