Ice time to be harder to come by
Repairs to Memorial Centre next year will have an effect on more than the Petes, Lakers
The Memorial Centre closure next summer and fall will have ripple effects on users of other facilities.
While most of the focus has been on the impact to the Peterborough Lakers and Petes, all minor and adult hockey and lacrosse users, figure skaters and hockey schools will be affected.
Moving practice ice time for the Petes and Peterborough Figure Skating Club to other city facilities impacts the Peterborough Hockey Association, Peterborough Girls’ Hockey Association and Peterborough Minor Hockey Council.
The PHA is the city’s biggest user of ice, averaging 145 hours a week in the city’s four arenas. At a meeting with city officials last month all user groups were told to expect less ice time next fall until the Memorial Centre reopens. The target date for reopening is Nov. 1.
To make up for lost ice PHA president James Bradburn said his group is looking outside the city.
“We’ve already been talking to Douro and Norwood for our ice needs,” said Bradburn. “Certainly, for September and October and maybe into November. They say Nov. 1 but you never know.”
Most county arenas don’t make ice as early as Peterborough.
“If you can guarantee a certain number of hours to these outside community rinks they’ll open their ice plant early,” said Bradburn. “Typically, Norwood wouldn’t open until the end of September but they said if you guarantee us 30 hours a week we’ll open early.”
The Petes' practices will move to the Evinrude Centre which will eat into practice and game times for AAA hockey. Those are prime time hours already being used at most county rinks.
“There is not a lot out there to think we’re going to be able to make this up,” said PMHC past president Walter DiClemente. “The month of September and October is going to be pretty hectic. It’s going to force a lot of the minor hockey to start running early morning practices. I know some teams are already doing that.”
The AAA teams draw players from as far as Apsley.
“To have a 6:30 practice on a Monday morning would be a little bit unreasonable for a kid to travel that far,” he said. “For the kids who live within 20 minutes of town it would be inconvenient but for two months that’s one of the things we’re looking at … We’re going to have to be creative.”
PGHA president Carole Wagner says her group already uses ice in Warsaw, Douro, Bewdley, Hastings, Lakefield, Omemee, Ops and Manvers. They’ll have to rely even more on those facilities and look for others.
“A lot of those rinks don’t open until the end of September and our girls are on the ice in August,” said Wagner. “It’s not going to be good.”
Organizations are looking at other ways of adapting.
“We may start our house league season a little later,” said Bradburn. “Normally it starts the week before Thanksgiving. We might have to start at the end of October or start of November when we get all the ice back on line.”
Hockey groups are also frustrated by further delays to construction of a twin-pad arena proposed at Trent University. Citing a lack of funds, the city has pushed back the start of the proposed replacement for Northcrest Arena until 2020.
Bradburn says user groups never supported the twin-pad being located at Trent. With the city also exploring construction of a replacement for the Memorial Centre, Bradburn wonders if it’s time to reconsider all the arena planning.
“They should scrap the Trent thing and build it all new down at Morrow Park with a big OHL rink and two side pads and all the other bells and whistles,” said Bradburn. “You have a common area everyone can go to in the centre of the community. Not out in the boondocks.”
Users envy what other communities they travel to have like Whitby, he said.
“They are community hubs. They have five rinks, restaurants, walking pads, pools, libraries, gymnasiums. This is what this community needs,” said Bradburn.
Wagner said the PGHA also opposed the Trent location. Even adding the twin-pad won’t be enough to accommodate everyone’s needs.
“They’re only doing two pads which is really only one because they’re going to tear down Northcrest,” said Wagner.