Cool Hockey Jobs: Steve Wilson, Blackstone

I'll be running interviews I do throughout the offseason where I'll talk to people who work in hockey about what they do and why it's awesome. If you work in hockey and would like to be considered as a participant, or if you have any suggestions or people you think would be good for this series, shoot me an email [18568reasonswhy@gmail.com].

I had the opportunity to talk with Steve Wilson, the co-founder of Blackstone Skate Sharpening. Below is the transcript of our conversation. A huge thanks goes out to him for spending his time talking to me and to Grant at Formula PR for helping organize the interview. Blackstone's recently released the Flat Bottom V, a sharpener that allows the skate to have a flat bottom but also edges on each side. This way, players get the opportunity to sharpen their skates for both speed and agility. Currently, six NHL teams have the FBV in their lockerrooms and the company expects that number to at least double. Wilson will be spending time this offseason traveling to NHL camps and working with the teams to test new technologies. You can read more about Blackstone and the FBV here.

Blackstone Introduces: The Flat Bottom"V" from Chris Labbate on Vimeo.

18,568 Reasons Why: First, what goes into your job? What do you do on a daily basis?

Steve Wilson: On a daily basis, I deal with people and sell ice skate sharpening machines. Recently we brought out a new way of sharpening your skate and it's called the Flat Bottom V and I've been talking to a lot of people about that; there's been a lot of interest. So that eats up a lot of my time, which I enjoy talking about.

18,568RW: Working with pro athletes, that's a lot of people's dream. How is it to actually work with pro athletes and work with their equipment which is a vital part of their game?

SW: It's a lot of fun. You're dealing with the elite players and the best of the best so the fun thing is to get them on something, especially the Flat Bottom V, where they improve on their performance. And you can see the glint in their eye of, "Oh wow this is great". And it's exciting to see that and to actually make a difference with their game.

18,568RW: You mentioned the new Flat Bottom V, could you describe why that's so different from everything else that's out there right now?

SW: Well, traditionally we've always sharpened skates with a hollow. With the Flat Bottom V, it's flat with two fangs that come down into the ice and come back on an angle. It's the best of both worlds. When you have had the radius, you sink down into the ice quite a bit and it slows you down when you have a deep hollow. But with the Flat Bottom V, you're skating right on top of the ice and you have more glide, but you have the same amount of bite. I know this is pretty techy - you have the same feeling but with way more glide. So the player isn't used to having that feeling and when you give them that it's surprising to them. So that's what's kind of neat about working with the elite players. And beer leaguers aside, the comment from the pros are, "Boy my legs aren't burning as much at the end of the shift". But with the beer leaguers, they say, "Boy I can drink more beer after the game".

18,568RW: I know people have always said you can have one thing or the other in skate sharpening, but with the new technology people are saying you can have both. Why hasn't anyone thought of anything like this before?

SW: It's like an evolution in technology. Skate sharpening has been around for awhile but there really hasn't been a company that's focused on making a difference for the player. We've always accepted that the hollow is the best, and what's happened is Blackstone has come up with a different way of dressing the wheel. And dressing the wheel is what puts the shape on the wheel. And before that, shape was just called a hollow or a radius because that was the only way we could dress the wheel. And now with this new dressing system we can put whatever shape we want on the wheel and it allows us to make different shapes, and we came up with a few and the Flat Bottom V worked the best.

18,568RW: You mentioned that people used to accept the new technology, what made you guys decide you wanted to try something different?

SW: Well working with the pros for so long. It was like, if we can find a way, and they've been asking us, "How can I get faster?" But the faster they got, the less bite they got. And that was an issue because they couldn't be as agile as they needed to be. What we did was we were able to make a way so we could have both. And that was the reason why - we wanted to satisfy a performance issue with the player and it just took us a long time to figure out how to do that. And now that we have that we actually have a patent, or a patent pending, and we feel very strongly that it will be a very good patent.

18,568RW: How did you get into the business of skate sharpening and starting Blackstone?

SW: Well it's an interesting story. I started sharpening skates with my father back in the hardware store in a small town called Chatham, Ontario. I was like the Richie Cunningham, you know Happy Days, of my town and put myself through college sharpening skates. Then I started working for our competitor. My dad worked for our competitor as well, eventually we closed the hardware store and he went and worked for our competitor as well and after a few years we decided to go on our own because we felt like we could bring something new to the industry. We worked diligently for 11 years to bring this out and last November we came out with the Flat Bottom V and have been trying to keep up with everybody since.

18,568RW: With skate sharpening, it's a lot more behind-the-scenes compared to other products; you don't see Blackstone logos everywhere. How do you build your company and build your publicity?

SW: Traditionally, the machines have been made for the user. It's hard to tell from somebody skating around who sharpened their skates. And so we are a behind-the-scenes company, such as we provide the equipment for the service center for the Olympics, we provided for Salt Lake City and for Torino and we're going to be in Vancouver. And not many people know that that service is even provided at the Olympics let alone which machines are being used. Typically for the Olympics, I'm there for about five weeks. I'm there setting everything up and orchestrating that and making sure everything runs smoothly throughout the whole thing. So if a player needs anything at all, whether equipment, whether it needs to be sewed, if they have an issue with their pads, whatever needs to be done, making sure that all of their equipment is handled, if they need their skates sharpened they get that done there; it's quite an ordeal.

18,568RW: Complete the sentence: The best part about working for Blackstone is...

SW: The best part of working for Blackstone would be the satisfaction of being part of the hockey industry and making the performance of players better.

18,568RW: Is there anything that people might not know about your company that might be interesting or that they should know?

SW: I think the main thing that we're proud of is our innovation. We built the company from ground zero, we had nothing, to a company that has employees who are good people and we have a great team and it makes a difference for players. You can have the best sticks or gloves or skates, but if you don't have sharp skates you can't play the game.

18,568RW: Is there anything you'd like to add?

SW: We're just proud of what we do and we make sure that we do a good job on everything that we do. It's very important to us to have the precision machinery and to make sure we have good customer service.