Hockey arenas determined to get reopening right

They blew a tire or two getting back on the ice.

And after a long day at the rink, the dogs were certainly barking.

But aside from the achy feet and a few spills thanks to dull skates, there were plenty of smiles as hockey took its first strides back onto arena ice this weekend.

“We’re pumped,” said Ryan Hilderman, a hockey camp mogul in the Calgary area. “We had a couple of days to adjust to how we were allowed to do that (after the Stage 2 rules of Alberta’s relaunch strategy were announced Tuesday), and away we went. “It went really well.”

Hilderman’s P3 Sports Inc. campers in Cochrane quickly put behind the months of lost training due to the coronavirus pandemic by taking to the ice Friday.

Tsuut’ina Nation’s 7 Chiefs Sportsplex and other private arenas are now open for skaters looking to hone their skills over the summer. And other rinks in Calgary are a week or two from being ready to open their doors for the sport, although city-owned arenas appear to be at least a month from having hockey back in action.

“It’s very important that we take things one step at a time and we utilize this opportunity to actually demonstrate that we have an adjusted way of operating,” said Dave Ford, the president of Calgary Cougars Hockey Club, a yearround development organization for 160 kids from age 6 to 14. “If we’re not successful in this, then I would say more likely than not you’re not going to see hockey or ringette or figure skating facilities really reopen until 2021.

“If we have an outbreak, they’re going to say ... ‘that was a nice try, but that didn’t work out so well.’ ”

Those running the hockey camps and clubs are getting direction from each of the facilities on how it will work on the ice.

“It was like the government ripped off a Band-aid and said, more or less, you can go back to playing games,” Hilderman said. “That caught us off guard, because we were prepared to go back in pods or cohorts of six players and half-ice and, all of a sudden, we’re allowed 50 people on benches and ice. We’re going to slow-play it and make sure we do it the right way from our perspective and the facilities’ perspective.”

For months, however, it seemed apparent summer hockey was being forgotten or at least shuffled down to Stage 3 of the relaunch.

“We weren’t getting answers, and the frustrating part was we didn’t really know who to go to,” said Hilderman, whose P3 operation runs camps in Cochrane and Calgary for kids in learn-to-play all the way up to talents in the pro, college/university and junior ranks.

The advice of MLAS to the hockey crowd was to band together and mobilize, just like the golf community did in getting heard by the province.

And so, Ford, Hilderman and a handful of other summer puck leaders — including Kris Bouchard and Darcy George of Calgary — formed the United Hockey Alliance of Alberta that brought together 60 different companies and attracted 5,000-plus signatures on a petition.

The UHAA then submitted to the government a full return-to-play proposal to prove they could put on summer camps and club hockey in a manner just as safe as restaurants and stores that had been allowed to reopen in Stage 1.

“The biggest issue for us was the playgrounds,” Hilderman said. “How can playgrounds be open for the mental health of kids — which none of us were against — and not hockey rinks? It’s just that we couldn’t get an answer, when playgrounds are unsupervised areas. “It was frustrating.”

Today, everybody in the hockey community is thrilled to be back, even under restrictive conditions.

P3’s experience in these early stages is much like you would envision — safety first. The arena doors are locked until 10 minutes before the time slot, and players show up fully dressed except for their skates, which are put on in locker-room stalls spaced two metres apart before taking to the ice.

On the ice, it’s all skill drills without one-on-one battles — for now.

There’s no sharing of water bottles, the tops of the boards are wiped down after each session, and players exit through a different door than the one they entered so as not to bump into those coming in for the next ice time.

If all goes right, the kids will be ready for what awaits them — or at least have an improved understanding of what is likely to be a new normal — in the upcoming hockey season.

“I think we will be able to work through some kinks in the summer — not only from an on-ice and skillbased perspective but from a safety perspective and how we phase into this,” Hilderman said.

“Maybe in August we’ll be able to start playing some games so that when Hockey Alberta sanctions are lifted and minor hockey is back, we’ll be able to have some suggestions about what works and what doesn’t.”

We’re going to slow-play it and make sure we do it the right way from our perspective and the facilities’ perspective.