Minor hockey's ice bill rises eight per cent, and the leagues redraw the map
The rate covers the refrigeration bill. The scramble is over who skates at 6 a.m. and who gets the Saturday slots.
The city's arena rate letter went out to the minor hockey associations this week: eight per cent more an hour, effective with fall ice. Nobody disputes the reason — the refrigeration plants run on electricity, and electricity costs what it costs. The dispute is over everything downstream.
Eight per cent on an hour of ice is eleven dollars. Across a season, for an association running forty teams, it is the difference between holding registration fees and adding sixty dollars a family — and the associations have spent the week choosing between those, publicly and not always gracefully.
The quieter fight is the schedule. Prime ice — weekday evenings, Saturday mornings — is allocated on a formula that predates two new leagues and one amalgamation, and the rate increase has every association re-reading it. The north-side leagues want the formula reopened; the ones holding grandfathered slots have discovered a deep respect for tradition.
The city's recreation branch, asked whether the formula will be reviewed, said the review is "ongoing," which every hockey parent in the city correctly understands to mean the 6 a.m. practices will be decided the way they always are: at a table, in a rink lobby, in October.
