As hockey people from New England, we spend an awful lot of time sitting in rinks throughout the year.
Players, coaches, parents, fans. No matter what category you fall into, there is no doubt that few regions in the country have as much passion for the game at all levels — from the youth and high school levels to colleges and the Boston Bruins — as New England.
As time has changed, though, so have the places we play and watch the game as well as what consumers are looking for in and around the rink. New rinks and expansion projects have been unveiled throughout the region in recent years, adding a bit of glitz and glamour to the storied New England hockey scene.
“Having a sheet of ice is great, but it’s about everything else today,” said Chris Collins, who handles strategic consulting and development services for the Massachusetts-based Edge Sports Group, seeing several recent projects come off the ground including Essex Sports Center in Middleton, Mass., Fidelity Bank Worcester Ice Center and Wellesley Sports Center, all with the use of unique public-private community partnerships.
“All the old DCR rinks are still around and being used, but I think people would rather play somewhere else with countless amenities and have everything at their fingertips.”
A new complex could open by the spring of 2021 at The Downs in Scarborough, Maine, also thanks to Edge, and Collins says, “It seems like there’s a new project popping up once every couple weeks.”
The goal of all Edge facilities is to create an “ecosystem” among tenants, ranging from restaurants and shops to strength and conditioning and physical therapy spaces. Such multi-purpose and multi-sport facilities are becoming the norm these days throughout New England and beyond, helping to
make the busy lives of those who use them that much easier.
In Wellesley, it is possible for a parent with multiple children playing different sports to have practices or games at the same location, as the complex includes two NHL-sized ice sheets, an indoor turf field, competition and warm-up pools in addition to rehab and strength training rooms.
“Since hockey is such a popular sport here, it’s an important concept, but if we weren’t doing this in such a hotbed I’d be looking at what people like us are doing and try to model that anywhere in the country,” said Collins, citing an example of a facility for basketball and volleyball that exists using a similar model in California. “Time is a valuable commodity, so it’s great if you can save people an hour out of their day by having them not have to go to strength and conditioning across town before they head to the rink, or if they have to drop off multiple kids.”
Worcester Ice Center also is home to two sheets of ice, Reliant Medical Rehabilitation, Peak Fitness Center, a pro shop, Worcester Railers team store (the building is owned by Railers HC owner Cliff Rucker, and the team practices at the facility) and the Steam Energy Cafe. Bay State Brewing Company will open a brewery and tap room this winter inside the arena.
While serving the youth is a main goal for many new facilities, those around New England have made an immediate impact on players of all ages.
For example, the Worcester building’s use rises all the way up to the professional level with the Railers, but Worcester State University, Becker College and Worcester Academy are all among the programs that have made the rink their winter home after previously being spread throughout the city and other central Massachusetts communities.
“I’ve just noticed that when they’re building the rinks today, they obviously want to have good ice but there’s also a focus on what else hockey players need to be successful,” said Worcester State junior captain Matthew Manning, a Michigan native who played junior hockey in both the USPHL and EHL. “What goes along with hockey? The training, and our facility has the training upstairs. It’s a big time-saver and a huge convenience for teams that can play and train out of there without having to go from one facility to the next. A lot of the rinks I’ve seen out there are built with that in mind.”
New rink projects also have come to fruition at the prep school level, serving as stunning centerpieces of athletic department facilities at the likes of Deerfield Academy and Thayer Academy.
Not dissimilar to some of the aforementioned new public spaces and college arenas that are being renovated, keeping up with the crowd has become important on the great New England prep hockey scene.
Just as it is at the college level, the process of bringing student-athletes into such institutions remains competitive. A state-of-the-art, second-year facility like Deerfield’s — known as the Class of 1993 Rink — already has proven to go a long way in that realm as well as bringing the school community together.
“We displaced a really old rink, and it was built as part of an overall complex that also includes a field house, rowing erg tanks, golf simulation room, and a new gym,” said Bob Howe, Deerfield’s athletic director and also an assistant hockey coach. “It has connected the rink to the rest of the winter athletic programs, which is huge for people being able to get there to see games and just congregate in the rink. It’s been really fun to watch.”
The rink is located on the lowest level of a three-floor complex and offers modern amenities that were simply not available at the Big Green’s former home known as “The Barn,” including air temperature control, seats for about 500 fans, live streaming video for games and practices, and an adjacent shooting room.
After a successful season on the ice for both the boys and girls programs, Howe received rave reviews from many parties.
“We hear it from the referees who come into our building, outside groups, definitely from the coaches within the league,” said Howe, president of the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council who spent 12 years at Loomis Chaffee before taking over as Deerfield’s AD to start the 2016-17 school year. “They used to be dreading to come to Deerfield in a cold, dark, nasty rink where you didn’t have a locker room nearby. Now it’s just a nice place to come in and play.”
The summer has been an exciting one in Braintree, Mass., too, where Thayer Academy opened the first on-campus hockey rink in school history inside the new Thayer Sports Center, named in honor of longtime coach, Thayer hockey founder and former athletic director Arthur Valicenti. The project is of similar scope to Deerfield as the 86,000 square feet also includes an indoor turf useful for spring season practices, sport-specific locker rooms and function rooms, among other amenities.
Not only does Thayer become one of the last New England prep schools to open its own rink with this debut of this facility, but it also will offer a more unified experience between the programs in both genders. In previous seasons, former NHLer Tony Amonte’s boys program skated at the Canton SportsPlex while the girls team called Dedham’s Boch Ice Arena its home.
“Across the board, there’s such a tremendous buzz around the program,” said Rick Foresteire, the school’s athletic director who doubles as head baseball coach. “It’s really something for us to grow off. The boys especially have been so successful producing a lot of talent, but now having this, I think, makes us one of the premiere locations to go to school and play hockey in New England.”
The start of the season is months away, but Foresteire already sees the opportunity for doubleheaders featuring both teams and other programming to encourage student attendance that was impossible when the programs practiced and played separately in off-campus facilities. Participation also is expected to increase across all levels, with a middle school program for girls possibly on the way as early as this winter.
All of the excitement in the Deerfield and Thayer communities is thanks to their new, state-of-the-art rinks.
Of course, players don’t advance to the prep, college and professional levels without strong grassroots programs. Youth participation numbers have increased to an all-time high nationally in four straight years, according to USA Hockey, and it’s community rinks that make it all possible.
Anyone involved in the game has a go-to rink where they took their first skate and learned the game. Pete Joyal is working to make Warrior Ice Arena that place for those in the immediate Boston area.
In addition to hosting daily Boston Bruins practices and National Women’s Hockey League games for the Boston Pride during their respective seasons, the three-year-old Brighton rink hosts a wide variety of youth and adult public skates and learn-to-play clinics. Joyal is responsible for implementing that programming as an assistant facility manager and hockey director, seeing the growth of “next step” programs for all youth levels.
“Going into it, our goal with the on-ice sessions was … to develop lifelong Warrior Ice Arena skaters and keep people coming back,” he said. “We all have our ‘home rink’ that we all end up at periodically, or we’re still skating there regularly. We have a ton of youth and high school games here. So, just thinking back to the ‘barns’ we used to play in, this is a pretty special place for them to be able to call their home.”
Another unique part of Warrior Ice Arena’s emergence in the local scene has nothing to do with hockey. Though it is just a one-sheet facility in hockey terms, the number of off-ice events it has hosted is the greatest off-ice example of the region’s passion for the sport.
You name it, Warrior Ice Arena has had it in just a few short years — business meetings, birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, alumni events, and even a wedding.
“I think we offer a unique experience that a lot of companies look for, but it also just shows interested and passionate people in this area are about the Bruins and hockey and skating in general,” Joyal said.
Consider it an all-in-one experience, just like all of today’s up-and-coming rinks. But that place you called home years ago? There’s still some room for those, too.
“I think it’s awesome to see all kinds of new places popping up, but I also love that rink that has been there forever and has been a staple in that neighborhood. Those are great, too, because you can just walk into a place and feel history,” Joyal said. “The facilities that allow for larger tournaments, single-sheet facilities that might be 20 to 30 years in with a lot of history, or these newer ones with some extra special meaning because they’re a private school’s new rink or the Bruins’ new rink, they’re all cool and really special. It’s like a new chapter, if you will.”
