Adding ice rink would be good for Valley sports

Sometimes, great ideas are signs in the sky. They fall on our heads. Like snow. And ice. With lists of 2020 New Year’s Resolutions being compiled this weekend, the First Lady of our Valley, Mother Nature, made a suggestion Thursday.

She turned the Valley into a giant ice rink.

Among the civic improvements on our Valley to-do list, an ice rink remains in the top five.

We refer to Luc Robitaille’s Ice-O-Plex template: two 200-by-85-foot regulation ice slabs, with an over-arching restaurant overlooking both from the middle.

It is the arrangement at the Los Angeles Kings’ Toyota Training Headquarters in El Segundo.

This should have been the plan for the ill-fated Gretzky Center, which is now the Pioneer Events Center.

The bait-and-switch shysters who hoodwinked the city of Lancaster and dragged The Great One’s name through the mud somehow came up with two composite in-line blading rinks, and an indoor soccer field.

We do soccer outdoors in these parts.

Roller hockey, too. Thus, ice hockey fans have had to make the commute to Valencia Ice Station, or points further south like the newly reopened PickWick Ice in Burbank.

The Ice-O-Plex format allows plenty of ice time for public skating as well as adult and youth hockey leagues.

It would also allow the Golden and Desert Mountain Leagues to pursue hockey as an interscholastic sport.

The Los Angeles Kings High School Hockey League would welcome our high school kids with open arms.

Plus, would there there be a cooler place to have lunch on a typical 105-degree summer afternoon than at the ice rink?

One by one, things we once had to leave the Valley to access have become a part of our hometown landscape.

The Mall. The Auto Malls. The Miracle Mile of Commerce along Tenth Street West in Palmdale. The Hangar. The Lancaster National Soccer Center. The Big 8 and Best in the West softball complexes.

An ice rink, like so many other sports facilities, would make us a destination.

It would be easier to get to the Valley than Bakersfield for East Kern residents. We would draw from the Victor Valley as well.

North of Newhall Pass would have something else to think about.

When San Fernando businessmen came close to building an ice complex near the former Kaiser Permanente site a dozen years ago, they had former Olympic medalist and national champion Linda Fratianne lined up to oversee Figure Skating Instruction.

Every four years, there is a spike in interest in figure skating following the Winter Olympics.

There will be again in 2022, following the Beijing Games.

We should ride that spike like a rocket’s column of fire.

Hockey Moms will continue to make that predawn trip to Valencia in the maelstrom of the 14 Speedway Commute.

But wouldn’t it be nice if they didn’t have to?