League frets over impact of climate change
How many great hockey players had their passion for the sport sparked by cold winter afternoons playing pickup hockey on a frozen pond, skating and shooting and honing the skills they would need to turn pro?
The National Hockey League would venture to guess a lot, which is why the league is worried that global warming could affect the future of hockey.
The 2014 NHL Sustainability Report, the first of its kind for the league, addresses the concrete connection between hockey and the environment, and the challenges faced by the NHL from climate change and freshwater scarcity.
The report, made public Monday, makes it clear that hockey is affected by environmental issues.
“The ability to skate and play hockey outdoors is a critical component of the league’s history and culture,” says the introduction.
Recently, researchers have found a 20- to 30-per-cent decrease in the length of Canadian skating seasons over the past 50 years. In fact, Concordia University geography professor and climate-change researcher Damon Matthews, in Montreal, has predicted there might not be any more outdoor rinks in southern Canada by 2050.
The goal, says the NHL report, is to track and measure the impact of its business, reducing resource use where feasible, offsetting its footprint where possible and always striving to support and inspire its clubs, communities, partners, fans and employees to make a positive impact on the environment.
With revenues of more than $3 billion US and 68 million fans in North America, the NHL is well positioned to have an impact on environmental strategy, something it already started with the creation of NHL Green, in 2010, to show its commitment to protect the environment through more sustainable business practices.
In a letter accompanying the report, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says the league not only wants to do what is environmentally correct, but it has a vested interest in doing so.
“Our sport can trace its roots to frozen freshwater ponds, to cold climates,” he says. “Major environmental challenges ... affect opportunities for hockey players of all ages to learn and play the game outdoors.”
And some of the league’s world-class outdoor hockey events, like the NHL Winter Classic, require real winter weather—not-slush-inducing moderate temperatures.
In the report’s afterword by former goalie Mike Richter, who led the New York Rangers to a Stanley Cup victory in 1994, he remembers growing up in a suburb of Philadelphia and imagining himself as a young Guy Lafleur on the frozen water.
“Here is where young players, limited only by their imagination, develop their true genius for the sport.”