How to Care for Your Ice Hockey Skates

Video Transcript

"This is Tim McKeig, of the UNCW Seahawks, and today, we're going to show you how to take care of your ice hockey skate. Now, when you get to your ice hockey skate, you're going to want to make sure you take great care of these skates. Many things can go wrong, that would lead to reduction of the lifespan of your skate. Now, these skates are very expensive, so you're going to want to make sure you take good care of them, to get the most use out of them. Some of the things you're going to want to think about, when taking care of your skates, is always air them out. After use, open your bag, hang them up on some type of rack, maybe a shelf, to allow the moisture to get out of your skate. Some of the things that will help that, is after use, you want to have a nice little rag or towel, that you're going to want to wipe down your blades with. You're going to have a lot of snow buildup. If you leave that on there, you're going to get a lot of rust, and it's going to deteriorate your skate blade. Also, as you can see, there's many screws and bolts in here, that can also be damaged from rust, if you do not take proper care of your skates. Some things that will help you when doing that, would be these skate guards, which you can purchase at local pro shops, or sport retail stores. They actually fit right on the bottom of your blade. After use, you're going to want to take them out of your bag, air them out. Go ahead and put some of the skate guards on. There's different varieties. These right here would be soft ones, that would absorb a lot of the wetness and moisture. I would suggest these. For somebody not using as much, as many of the times, is a basic nice pair of hard plastic skate guards, will allow you to walk around the rink freely, and not have to worry about damaging your blade, by stepping on cement, or other things that may damage your skate, and that would be how you take care of your ice hockey skates."