How to Lace Hockey Skates Properly

Video transcription

Hello, my name is Bryan Hapeman, hockey director at The Wilmington Ice House in Wilmington, North Carolina, and today I'm going to talk to you about how to lace your ice hockey skates properly. For this, you will need hockey skates and skate laces. First, you need to choose the laces that you're going to be using, the new ones that you're going to be putting in. There is either waxed laces or non-waxed laces. I personally prefer the wax laces. It helps to keep the water from seeping through into the lace which will then make your boot of your skate wet and the metal rivets or eye holes here will get rusted so the wax lace is what I prefer. You also need to determine the size of the lace that you're going to be putting into your skate. The best way to do that is by going off the lace that you just took out, the old lace and measuring it and then choosing it. They come in set sizes. Once you have your wax laces chosen at the correct size similar to a shoe or a sneaker, you're going to want to start at the bottom and put the lace through each eyelet, pull it through and this is a key factor in doing this correctly the first time is making sure that the laces are even at the top so that you have the right amount of length on each side, the same amount, exact same amount and then you're going to simply lace them up just as you would a regular shoe or sneaker and you should replace these laces you know, every few months depending on how often you skate. You should replace them as soon as they start to get brown or look like they're going to rip because without them you can't skate and in the middle of a game if your laces aren't performing properly, you could cost your team. So, you want to continue lacing these all the way up until you have a finished laced skate and that's how to lace your hockey skate.