Rinky-dink

We all love convenient, comfortable, warm minor hockey arenas with big dressing rooms and, hopefully, ventilation.
London has two of the best in the two-pad Kinsmen Arena and Western Fair Sports Centre, albeit the latter is getting a little beat up from heavy use. Our city also has some of the worst, including the low-ceiling Silverwood Park (in 10 years of hockey, we've never played or practised there! Lucky us.), the crazy cold Oak Ridge and  Farquarson Arena, our main practice rink. Farquarson features maybe the smallest change rooms in the city. Try filling them with 18 teenagers and their hockey bags. Ditto for the tiny dressing rooms at the Ilderton Arena - the place made famous by figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

It's a little tight at Memorial in St. Thomas.

Memorial Arena in St. Thomas, where San Jose Sharks Captain Joe Thornton learned to play, features a drop of about a kilometre from the bench to the ice surface. And some of the dressing rooms are long, narrow spaces tucked under the stands.
Not all old arenas are uncomfortable barns. Allman Arena in Stratford, where we're heading tonight, is my favourite destination. Locals there rejected a city proposal to rip out the classic old seatings in favour of more modern ones that would've better accommodated today's big butt patrons. New seats, people said, would ruin the atmosphere. As someone with a skinny butt, I think they were right.
But ugly, substandard arenas are not limited to smaller cities and towns. One of the worst arenas we've played in was Chesswood in Toronto - we expected better in the Big Smoke. It was hard to find, uncomfortable for viewing and its tiny lobby filled up too fast during the comings and goings of a tournament.
Toronto plans a "skyscraper" minor hockey palace on its waterfront, a project propelled in part by the great growth in female hockey.
But Toronto Sun editor Rob Granatstein, a player himself and emerging hockey dad, says in an excellent column (Nov. 20, 2010) that the project might get bogged down in the waterfront muck.
If it happens, the waterfront arena will be spectacular. But maybe a more realistic plan for Toronto would be to rip down ramshackle rinks like Chesswood and help private sector operators replace them with facilities like London's Western Fair Sports Centre.