Trouble getting indoor ice time in Edmonton? There's not enough of it to go around
CBC
Shawn Melnyk and his wife, Carmen Vaugeois, sit down every Sunday to plan their week around hockey practice for their two boys.
Demand for prime-time ice hours is high, so an early 4:45 p.m. practice across town can throw a major wrench in the family's plans.
That's when the calls to grandma and grandpa start, or team chat messages looking for carpool solutions roll in.
"If I'm working, say off-site or out of town, it's extremely difficult to get to. And then if one parent is at home managing a whole household by themselves, it's extremely, extremely difficult," Melnyk said. "It definitely requires a village in that case."
The early kids' practices are a symptom of a larger problem in Edmonton.
There's a shortage of available ice sheets, and it's compounded by the reality that many aging arenas, first flagged for replacement more than 15 years ago, are still in use.
In July, city council got a memo on the arena facilities capital development plan from Jennifer Flaman, deputy city manager in charge of community services.
Flaman's report said the city provides 31 ice sheets in 22 facilities — one sheet for every 39,000 residents. By comparison, the City of Calgary operates 54 ice sheets within 34 facilities, or one sheet for every 23,000 residents.
Administration recommends replacing aging single arenas with twin or multi-surface arenas. Options for consideration will go into the 2027-30 capital budget submission, the memo says.
"There definitely is a shortage," said Jeremy Haluschak, executive director of Hockey Edmonton, the governing body for minor hockey in the city.
"It's not just hockey — it's ringette, it's figure skating, speed skating.… We're not getting the supply that we're asking for."
Between 1958 and 1975 the city built 15 single arenas. The average age of those arenas is now 57 years and some are nearing the end of their useful life.
In 2009, Edmonton city council approved a strategy to close six aging single arenas and replace them with three twin-arena facilities. Today, five out of six of those aging arenas are still in operation and have not been replaced.
But as the city population has grown significantly, so has demand. The report from Flaman says the city accommodated 82.5 per cent of requested demand during the winter 2023/24 season.
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