Every professional athlete looks to gain an edge whenever possible. For hockey players, the game is evolving to be more about speed than ever before, so finding a way to add some speed on skates is essential. That has led some NHL players to lace up with some figure skating experts to fine tune their skating skills.
This isn’t straight out of the 1992 film The Cutting Edge, in which the top hockey player in the United States pairs up with an Olympic hopeful figure skater for the most unlikely figure skating duo ever seen. This is legitimately a growing trend in the sport.
“Last year was the first summer I went to a skating coach, and she did wonders for my skating and made me a lot more comfortable on the ice, and obviously made a big difference this year for me,” Sam Reinhart of the Buffalo Sabres said in a story published by the New York Times. Reinhart was third among NHL rookies this season with 23 goals, so perhaps there was something to this.
So what is it about figure skating that can be so beneficial to NHL players? Being able to manage your body is the key, which is obviously essential in figure skating. Barb Aidelbaum is a consultant for the Vancouver Canucks. She’s been helping hockey players get better control of their bodies on ice for three decades, and she currently helps four players including Reinhart.
“A big part of being a high-performance skater is weight distribution, where you are on the blade, whether on the ball of the foot or the middle or just behind the middle,” said Aidelbaum, “There’s eight edges on ice skates, and figure skaters train in the edging capacity. If a player has a strong command of all those eight edges, then the off-ice training will transfer over.”
We may not see a real-life version of The Cutting Edge, but it might be fun to see what these guys could do in singles performances during the All-Star weekend, if not in the Olympics. All kidding aside though, using figure skating to work on balance and making quick moves seems like a logical way to go about training in the offseason. As long as the laces are tied properly, at least.
