Looking for ice time? Take a number

Ray Mason did everything he could to find ice time in west Montreal this season.

The president of NDG Minor Hockey called outside communities to inquire about booking ice. He scheduled practices at 7 a.m. He called private rinks and universities to find any free time they had. Still, it wasn't enough.

"For the first time in the 14 years I've been with the league, we had to turn players away," Mason said. "We tried everything to get ice time, but there doesn't seem to be any hope."

It wasn't easy to explain to the 10 midget-aged players who tried to register this year only to be told the league couldn't accommodate them.

"People aren't happy," he said. "We even had a lawyer letter from one parent who was upset because his kid wasn't playing hockey. Of course, the last thing we want to do is turn kids away, but we can't develop their hockey skills if they can't have practices."

This is but one example of the ice shortage across the country. Since a slew of rinks were built to celebrate Canada's 100th birthday in 1967 - the reason you'll find many arenas named Centennial - new ice pads haven't been a priority.

There are, of course, a few communities like Placentia, N.L., where they struggle to fill ice time at the local rink.

"It's a unique problem," says minor hockey league president Lisa Gambin. "And not a bad one when you consider the trouble some people have getting ice time."

Short 18-20 rinks in Calgary

Calgary is a glaring example of the problem more typically to be found across the country.

With 50 indoor ice pads, Hockey Calgary president Perry Cavanagh estimates the city needs 18-20 more to accommodate growing programs that include figure skating, speed-skating, recreational hockey, beer leagues and free skating, let alone minor hockey.

The solution for minor hockey associations?

"We're going outside the city to find ice, and that means fees are higher and we're travelling up to an hour and a half away. We're also giving our older players late practice times, we're limiting practice times," Cavanagh said.

"We accommodate the games, but then we cut game times to fit all of them in, and we still have to get at least a half-ice practice per team to allocate on a weekly basis. It's not nearly enough. It's ridiculous."

It's hardly a new problem in Calgary. The city was asked to initiate a study on the need for ice nine years ago because demand was skyrocketing. Eight years later, the Max Bell Centre went up. One other arena has been added since.

"It's sad to see that it's taken this long to see any real action," Cavanagh says. "The population has doubled in that decade and they just haven't kept up from a recreational point of view."

Keeping up isn't the only problem - there's also maintenance. Many of the ice pads in the city are aging -- a problem Hockey Alberta president Rob Litwinski says extends across the province.

"The ice shortage we see in Calgary, and to a lesser extent Edmonton, for the rest of the province right now, it's not something we've seen a real urgency to. Not to say it's not going to be there, because we know the infrastructure is getting older and older each year, and that's going to need to be addressed."

This isn't unique to big city centres, either.

Portage la Prairie, Man., has a double rink to service a community of 15,000, and it's old. Plans are in place to build a new complex that will open in early 2010, in time for the Manitoba Winter Games -- but at the expense of the other rinks.

"The city plans to shut our old rinks down once that opens, but we need at least one of them to stay open," said Ferdi Nelissen, president of the city's minor hockey association.

'There's an ice crunch everywhere'

In the past five years the minor hockey association has grown from 200 to 320 players. At the same time, two high schools have added teams and two new regional teams have started up. Demand is high.

"There's an ice crunch here. There's an ice crunch everywhere. Everybody is struggling to find ice," Nelissen said. "In Winnipeg I know a lot of kids didn't find out their schedule until late because nobody knows what's going on with their ice."

In Portage la Prairie, the league's bantam AA team has 15 home games this season --only two of them will be played on home ice.

"We had to schedule the other 13 in surrounding communities because we just don't have the ice here," Nelissen said.

Even that's not always a solution, as Ray Mason found out in Montreal.

"We call any other community that has ice and they say, 'OK sir, we can give you some time at midnight,'" Mason said. "It's not going to work."

So, they're forced to make it work in their own community.

"For eight atom teams, we had three practice hours last week. We have to split the ice, we put two teams on the ice for a half-ice practice, and we do that all the way up to peewee. We would love to give all teams their own full-ice practice, but it's impossible. They'd be practising once a month at most," Mason says.

"It's just not acceptable for kids who are trying to develop their game. People talk about how important that is, but how can it happen here when we can't get the ice?"