A lack of guaranteed St. Albert ice time for playoff games means an attempt to bring a seniors AA men’s hockey team to St. Albert might falter.
Rick and Craig Dory have been able to get promises of ice time for their regular home games if they have a team on the ice next season, but the city can’t guarantee spots for playoffs.
Rick Dory came to the council meeting on Tuesday to ask council to reclassify their organization so they can have a higher priority for ice time.
“We won’t move ahead if we can’t get our playoff ice,” Dory said in an interview Thursday. No motion was passed by council on Tuesday.
Doing all playoff games away from home could be tough on the players and the host teams to provide that much time, he said.
They first started thinking of bring a seniors AA team here in 2013, and were accepted into the North Central Senior Hockey League (NCHL) for the 2014/15 season.
But it was too late to get ice allocated in St. Albert, and they were asked to wait for the 2015/16 season.
Now they’ve got promises of time for the home games, after some previous mixed messages. But Dory said they need the playoff ice time to seal the deal.
“If we can get the ice, we’ll make it happen one way or another,” Dory said.
There has already been interest from players and the official word hasn’t even gone out yet, Dory said.
He understands other organizations don’t want to lose their ice time, so he’d hoped a senior AA team, which would have less ice demands than a junior A team, might be a “happy medium” way to bring high calibre hockey to St. Albert.
Chris Jardine, the city’s general manager of community and protective services, said the issues promising playoff time stem from the generally high demand for St. Albert ice time.
“We physically do not have enough ice time for the demand that is being asked,” Jardine said.
Jardine said the city would endeavour but could not guarantee to provide ice time for playoffs or tryouts.
Adding the regular season home games in has already displaced some other arena users, he said.
“We didn’t give everybody everything they were looking for so everybody’s sharing the pain a little bit,” Jardine said.
St. Albert minor hockey teams are already renting more than 100 hours outside of St. Albert a week, he said.
The city is booking almost all of what Jardine called “useable time.” He pointed out not many people want to access the rink between midnight and 6 a.m. and during the day on weekdays there isn’t much demand.
But after 4 p.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends, there are plenty of groups looking to lace up their skates.
There’s about 70 to 80 hours of that useable time available a week, Jardine said. He pointed out that if minor hockey alone is already booking 125 hours a week, that shows if there was another arena added in St. Albert it would already be over capacity during peak hours based on current demand.
“We would love to be able to have (the senior AA team) in, but it’s a matter of the demand exceeds the availability,” Jardine said, adding the best they can do is “share the pain” amongst all the ice-based organizations.
Construction of a sixth sheet of ice for St. Albert is slated for 2019 in the city’s tentative 10-year capital plan.
Previously, St. Albert’s highest level of hockey was the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s (AJHL) St. Albert Steel. The team relocated to Whitecourt in 2012 and is now known as the Wolverines. The Steel followed the AJHL’s St. Albert Saints, who relocated to Spruce Grove in 2004.
