Hockey in the desert

Back in February we reported on how global warming was messing up the outdoor skating season in Canada and the northern United States. Now, the Stanley Cup final is being played in Las Vegas, one of America’s hottest cities.

Doesn’t that mean that hockey is contributing to climate change by building ice palaces in the desert? Before you give Las Vegas and the National Hockey League too much side eye, it’s worth noting that the league has been working to address environmental issues. It has an ongoing sustainability initiative aimed at minimizing the sport’s damage to the environment, and that initiative includes T-Mobile Arena, home of the Vegas Golden Knights. The city’s leaders, furthermore, have made progress in running the municipal government on renewable energy.

The crew at T-Mobile Arena seems to do a good job. The ice gets decent marks from players, but there’s only so much you can do to fight that heat. The outside temperature was above 32 C before Game 1 on Monday.

Robert McLeman, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo noted that while the spectacle of ice hockey in the desert might seem absurd, making ice is only one energy gulping aspect of arenas. Cooling the vast volume of inside air and taking out the humidity so that players and spectators are comfortable requires an enormous amount of energy, whether an arena is hosting hockey a monster truck show or a trade fair.

So, he said, as North America heads toward summer, hockey would be complicated just about anywhere. Temperatures in Toronto, for example, are expected to be around 24 C this week.