One of the more popular hockey training aids on the market today is synthetic ice tiles. One of the main reasons why people love them so much is that they can be installed just about anywhere that there is a hard, flat surface with enough room to build on. Depending on the brand of the synthetic ice and the type of hockey flooring that you go with, you will be able to determine the size of the panels.
Dryland Hockey Tiles
There are a number of hockey flooring types that are available on the market. Synthetic ice is one of the top choices, but there are also dryland hockey tiles. The two are commonly confused with each other because they are fairly similar. However, dryland hockey flooring is made for dryland hockey, which means that there is no ice involved. When you install dryland tiles you will not be able to ice skate on them, nor will you be able to build a rink outdoors. Although the dryland tiles are slick in the sense that you can slide a puck across it and it will be much like it is on ice, the flooring is too soft for ice skates. It is not formulated to withstand the ice blades and it would be much like trying to ice skate across linoleum flooring if you were to try to do it.
Dryland hockey flooring usually comes in tiles that are one square foot apiece. This is one of the other main differences between synthetic ice tiles and dryland hockey tiles. Synthetic ice tiles are actually panels that are approx 8 square feet. 24 inches by 48 inches are usually the dimensions of a typical synthetic ice panel.
Synthetic Ice Tiles
Synthetic ice is made out of a specialized polymer plastic material that is equipped with lubricants, conditioners, and ultraviolet ray protectants. The reason for the embedded lubricants is that in order for synthetic ice to mimic real ice it has to have a substantial amount of lubricant that will allow for the ice skate blades to slide gracefully across the top.
When skaters skate on frozen water flooring, the heat from the ice skater’s blades causes a little bit of heat so that the ice will melt just enough to provide a tiny layer of water lubricant so that the ice skate blades can smoothly glide along. With the help of infused lubricants in synthetic ice, as the ice skaters move across the surface, a layer of lubricant helps to allow the skaters to glide along much like they were on real ice.
In the early days of synthetic ice, in order for people to be able to ice skate on it, they had to continually administer a silicon-based lubricant directly to the floor so that there would be enough glide for the skaters. Thanks to modern scientific discoveries, and some smart developers the synthetic ice of today is self-lubricated and ever so easy to care for.
To Answer the Question
As for whether or not synthetic ice tiles are small, it all depends on your perspective. Generally, synthetic ice comes in panels, and dryland tiles come in tiles. As we mentioned earlier, panels are larger than tiles, and they are not square. So, synthetic ice panels are small enough to be able to easily install in some tight places, but they are not as small as the square one-foot tiles.
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