Museum evicted for hockey arena

The birthplace of the Avro Arrow and current home to the under-visited Air and Space Museum in Toronto might soon give way to a new four-pad minor hockey palace, according to the Toronto Star.
As much as I like brand spanking new hockey arenas, and I recall a sad, cold and out-of-date arena around the corner from this museum, I'm not sure I'd favour the demolition of the deHavilland building and eviction of a museum which includes a reproduction of the Arrow.

Broken door policy

Always something new when the minor hockey kids get bigger and arenas get older.
Miffed by the referee's call, an opposing 18 (or 19) -year-old player took out his frustrations on the rink door at his home arena while playing my son's juvenile team Friday.
The slam was only something a motivated teen could do and when the door bounced back, one hockey dad tried to latch it, followed by one referee, followed by another hockey dad who, despite being an engineer by training, decided to revisit earlier attempts to kick the door into submission so the game could continue.
Last season we wouldn't have cared so much, because in competitive midget hockey a game is a game, no matter how long it takes to play. In house league juvenile, at least in London, a game is 50 minutes of rented ice time. Six games in and we still haven't gotten a complete game in without the curfew buzzer.
The referee saw the broken door as a chance to knock off for the night early, but enterprising hockey dads soon realized arena staff might have a tool and a technique. He did, and fixed it so the door couldn't open.
But the game could continue, perhaps to the chagrin of the ref.

Hockey violence subject of debate.

Or, put another way, hockey fight breaks out in University of Western Ontario lecture hall.

Season starts with arena in receivership

How would you feel if you'd paid your money for a minor hockey program and then found out the arena the league uses has been placed in receivership?
That's what faces players and parents of the Ice Dawgs, a non-affiliated kids' league in London, Ont.
The privately owned twin-pad London Ice Park has gone into receivership with a threat of closing in November, leaving the Ice Dawgs and other programs, mostly men's leagues, without ice.
Local radio station AM980 has the story this morning, on air and on its website.
The Ice Dawgs have rented ice elsewhere, but parents will have to fundraise to pay for it after already shelling out for ice time at the London Ice Park.
Ice Park used to be heavily used by the Elgin-Middlesex Chiefs, a AAA minor hockey program. But a new arena has opened in the nearby Middlesex County community of  Komoka and has become the home rink for the Chiefs.
London Ice Park has had a checkered past. It started as a curling club and is still referred to by many as Brookside arena. It features a huge restaurant/banquet area between the ice pads. But the changerooms are dark and damp and located in the basement. Players walk up stairs to reach the ice.
It's filled in over the years to provide ice time while city-owned arenas were being renovated, but hourly charges at London Ice Park were always higher than the tax-subsidized rates minor hockey received from the city.
This could be the end of the line for London Ice Park, unless a new owner with deep pockets is willing to reinvest and bring the place up to current standards.

Schooled in university intramurals

Took the time to look in on my son's intramural hockey game at the University of Western Ontario tonight.
It's fast and skilled - very much comparable to the A-AA midget league he was in last season, minus the heavy hitting.
And a UWO intramural team could smoke juvenile house league teams in London.

Londoner looks at ECHL team

I met Shmuel Farhi more than 20 years ago when I was the city hall reporter for the St. Thomas Times-Journal and he, recently arrived from Israel, was buying up historical buildings right and left in St. Thomas, Cambridge and later London. He also was involved, along with a St. Thomas housing developer and former mayor, with a team called the St. Thomas Wildcats in a defunct semi-pro league called the Colonial Hockey League.
Now the largest landlord by far in downtown London, he's set his sights on being a hockey owner again, apparently buying a professional team for his son, Ben, a business school student and former minor hockey player in London, to help run.
Not in London, mind you. California. In the 11,000-seat rink the San Jose Sharks once used.
It's a franchise in the ECHL, whose letters used to stand for East Coast Hockey League. (Now, in an odd marketing decision, the league's initials officially stand for nothing. But I digress.)
What's more Shmuel thinks owning the ECHL San Francisco Bulls could be a stepping stone for ownership of and NHL franchise, according to a story in The London Free Press.
Not in London, of course. But someone's got to own that second NHL franchise in the 905 area of Toronto when the NHL inevitably approves it. Who knows? Ten years from now, it might be Shmuel.

Classless

How can Sidney Crosby talk about class and sportsmanship in hockey when he has a teammate like this guy? Arron Asham might be the new Sean Avery of the NHL. Here''s his reaction after a fight with Jay Beagle of the Washington Capitals.

Slurmon time

Ah, just two games into the London juvenile schedule and controversy erupts in the form of a familiar theme - bias shown by a referee toward a home team.
The teams pay for 50 minutes of ice time in a curfewed game. Usually they get the games in, sometimes with two or three minutes left on the clock, but this time it was almost 10. A tribute to the parade of penalties dished out to my son's West London team and the debate that eventually erupted.
There were calls for contact with heads. Calls for body contact in a non-contact league. West London likely played three or four minutes at full strength during the entire game, with perhaps the two highest skilled forwards each tossed for separate infractions, perceived or real.
It was the first extraction from the game that was the more curious. An opposing player repeatedly described a West player, who happens to be in a longterm (for a teen) committed relationship with a member of the opposite sex, a homosexual - not that there's anything wrong with that. When the West player replied something like, "Nice Sean Avery act," he was tossed in the penalty box. When he was in the box and asked the referee, "Are you kidding me?", he was tossed from the game.
Apart from breaking the rule that silence is a virtue in minor hockey, the West player did little to justify an early end to his recreational hockey.
Perhaps his real sin was showing a lack of research with his own try at a witty response, as all hockey observers realize that former NHLer Sean Avery is an advocate for all and would never use one's sexual preferences as a slag, slur or silly taunt.
Maybe teenagers should take note. After all, next time the ref might get it right.

Minor hockey equipment causes infection

Amusing that a millionaire pro hockey player gets an elbow infection from equipment he's had since age 12. Wash that stuff, Clarke MacArthur!

Are the big hits of the NHL proving deadly? - Sport - Al Jazeera English

Al Jazeera English reports on brains and hockey.

Cherry and the pukes

Don Cherry is out-of-touch and misinformed on fighting in hockey, calling former NHL tough guys who are speaking out against fighting "pukes" on last night's Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. A sad misstep for an iconic Canadian hockey commentator.
Kids, never listen to this guy.

Minor hockey players grow up to be stars - sometimes

Fun exercise from the Toronto Star has Maple Leafs fans guessing who the minor hockey players pictured grew up to be.

Making contact

Here's a familiar tale in the Globe and Mail  from a mom of an 11-year-old Canadian competitive hockey player entering his first year of bodychecking.
We had the same concerns when our son was 11 started checking. Turns out he was one of the best body checkers in each league he played - especially skilled at hip checks when he was 12 or so, much to everyone's entertainment.
Maybe we should have worried about the other kids, not ours. 

Faith in goal

Toronto Maple Leafs goalie James Reimer has three favourite Bible verses he uses when preparing for games: Matthew 14:31, Isaiah 41:1- and Colossians 3:1, the Toronto Star reports.
Tyler Bozak plays video war games and researches opposition centres. Jay Rosehill watches hockey fight videos.

Juvenile hockey reborn

Kudos to minor hockey volunteers in London, Ont., for relaunching the city's juvenile hockey program. In its second season after being resurrected, the recreational program for 18-, and 19-year-old players seems to be yielding spectacular results, at least within our home association of West London.
My son started in tyke when there were five house league teams in West London. This year, he's joined the juvenile program which is fielding three teams this season in the city-wide Community Hockey League.
Considering the players are at an age where many have left town for university or college, are working part-time or even full-time jobs, discovered other sports to spend money on, or dedicate all their spare time to their squeezes, having this number of teams from one city neighbourhood is impressive.
Years ago, juvenile hockey in London was organized in an interesting way, but it was ultimately unpopular with the people who mattered the most - the customers, aka the kids playing the game.
Under the old system, after spending years representing the neighbourhoods in which they lived, all juvenile-aged kids were placed in a draft. Kids found themselves in changerooms without friends and playing with people they had competed against for years. Interest faded, despite the convenience of a steady Sunday night schedule.
The program returned last season with neighbourhood associations organizing teams. In West London's case, there were enough kids last season to form two teams. The core for each focused on kids from each of two major high schools.
This year in West London, one team has clustered all players born in 1992 - guys who have played together, off and on, since they were six. The two other teams divvied up kids born in 1993 to form, hopefully, equally talented squads while trying to accommodate requests for groups of friends to play together.
My son, who's now in university but living at home, will be playing with at least one kid he hasn't been a teammate of since tyke, maybe one or two he played A-AA with, and some he played AE with.
It's a mixed bag and a specturm of talent. But they're all doing it for the right reasons - fun, friends and fitness - and just like in tyke, they hope to win a lot and be the champions, but if it doesn't happen the season will still be a success.

Hockey night tonight

He doesn't need me. He drives himself, packs his own equipment and definitely ties his own skates. It's a city-wide house league juvenile sorting skate, and not a competitive A-AA tryout where relationships matter as much as talent sometimes.
Nevertheless, I'm tagging along as my son goes to what might be he last minor hockey start-of-season tonight.
Just when I thought it was over, his passion for playing takes hold on two fronts this season. First, he signs on for the city juvenile league and is destined to play with a radically different group, and skill level, than he's been used to for the past five seasons.
Second, he double dips by signing on to play for the King's University College team in a league at the University of Western Ontario. Considering he's paying out only $75 to play every Monday night from tomorrow until March at the classy Thompson arena on campus, who can blame him? It's a staggering bargain compared to more than $500 for a season of city juvenile.
Both are great for the core reasons of friends, fitness and fun. When he was a little kid, making friends was the big reason for taking part in both soccer and hockey. Now that he's in university, I'm calling it networking.

Making my pitch

A little bit of hockey overlaps with travel. I explain here.
And, coincidentally, Maclean's thinks so, too.

League deals with taunt

There's more today on the midget hockey case from Ottawa where a 15-year-old black player was taunted.
I find it hard to believe the referee or other officials did not hear the racial slur. Maybe it was easier not to make the call and pretend this kind of thing is just part of the rhythm of minor hockey for teens.
Fortunately, others did hear it, the organization caught up with the offending player, who admitted his action, apologized and has been sent on a sensitivity course.
Here's the story from the Ottawa Citizen.