The February opening of the Enerplus Arena in the northwest Calgary community of Rocky Ridge is a much needed addition in Calgary, where ice shortages are no secret.
“Any ice that we can get in Calgary is helpful, as everyone knows there’s been a shortage,” Hockey Calgary executive director Kevin Kobelka said.
“Primarily, our shortage is weeknights. Weekends we’re not so bad, but if we can get any extra ice on the weeknights we really do appreciate it.”
The NHL-sized ice surface is part of the Shane Homes YMCA at Rocky Ridge, the largest YMCA on the planet.
The arena will be used for minor hockey, recreational hockey, ringette, sledge hockey and in the future, figure skating. YMCA Business manager Amber Hooper said the demand for ice time is already high in the city.
“All of February is booked, most of March, and April is filling up quite quickly. February has been booked probably since September of 2017.”
The new arena has four spacious dressing rooms, two of them have flex rooms for co-ed teams, and adjacent to the hockey ice is a leisure pond that will be used for family skating in the winter and camps during summer months.
Alesia Migneault is a mom of three daughters aged nine, 11 and 13. She’s lived in Rocky Ridge for seven years and has been eagerly awaiting a tour of the grand facility.
“This is the best Christmas present ever because this was a long time waiting and we knew that this is going to get well used.”
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Migneault says her daughters don’t play hockey or ringette, so she thinks the leisure pond is a great addition.
“We’ve done leisure skating only and it seems like ice times are difficult to get when you do leisure skating or you’re outside and you’re exposed to the elements all the time. So here it’s nice because you get the one-stop shop as well, so you can do a lot of other things.”