It’s a simple question, but to a hockey family it’s an inquiry of seemingly endless possibilities. In fact, my top 10 recent searches on Waze all involve the word ice or rink. This isn’t because I don’t know where I’m going but based on practice timing the “out the door time” has a delta of 30-60 minutes. It’s the rare time I don’t mind 5:30am ice time, because no one else is crazy enough to be on the road and cause delays. However, in lieu of traffic-less commutes, I rely on technology to get me there with enough to for my bantam to dress or for me to wrangle my mite into his gear. Many days, especially on the double (sometimes triple) session days, I have found myself driving to the wrong rink, more on auto-pilot than paying any attention to my surroundings. Heck some of the time I find myself checking the rear view to make sure I have all the kids. Technology can’t really help with that last part but getting me where I am meant to be it is a lifesaver.
During the long season, my mite started naming most of the rinks we frequented and now I often refer to them by their nicknames rather than their actual names. Here is my fun filled list of locations where my sweatshirt-clad self can most often be found.
Home Base – this is actually the rink I would go to for free skate with friends during middle school. It’s familiar and hasn’t changed one iota in the better part of 20 years. Both my kids strapped on their first pair of skates at this rink and it is where my daughter rejected figure skates in favor of hockey. She played on her first team here and it is the rink that my mite is based out of for his first year on a team. My daughter didn’t make the cut for the Home Base team this year, but that is a story for another day (that and the contract debacle that resulted – that’s a full on two or three saga).
Pirate Rink – this is the truest essence of childhood imagination and skewed logic. The rink’s home team is not the pirates, it has nothing even remotely to do with pirates, but my ever imaginative and most likely bored child once sauntered into this high-end, need to sell a kidney to afford a year of tuition private prep school rink wearing his Captain Hook Halloween costume in all its glory. We still head down there during the season since one of the cadre of Russian coaches we call our own runs clinics there on some weekends. They have the nicest area to watch the kids on the ice, far warmer than in the rink itself, so naturally I wear my nicest sweatshirt on those occasions.
Vladi Rink – this rink bears the moniker of one of the coaches. We started at this rink since our daughter’s private coach’s (the main Russian if you will) brother runs clinics from this rink. They are both on the ice at times and the only way to tell them apart is which hat they wear. My son always asks what rink we are going to and the reply of Vladi Rink is always met with “Oh no, not Vladi rink.” He is intuitive enough to understand that a clinic at that rink was killer and that his sister was in for a tough day on the ice. Now our bantam is actually on the team out of Vladi Rink, so on some level it has become Home Base 2, plus they both work with their private coach at that rink, but I don’t think the moniker will ever change.
Devil Rink – my dear mite’s favor color is red and while he is a proclaimed Vegas Golden Knights fan the color red is associated with the Devils. The walls have red stripes around them and on the boards, ergo “Devil Rink”. Red rink would have made more sense in my mind, but hey, I’m not six and he wasn’t going to change his mind. This rink is where he did his very first clinic type experience under the ‘Learn to Play’ banner.
The Other Rink – this rink is literally a stone’s throw away from Home Base, less than two miles away and I never knew it existed. It’s amazing what you learn as an adult about things that have always been around you, but you didn’t know about. This is another rink that is home ice for a private prep school, but its slightly less posh than the Pirate Rink. It is run by a pair of former professional NHL’ers who are really nice. My son isn’t impressed and since it holds less entertainment value than the other rinks, he simple dismisses it as “the other” rink.
How many rinks do you find yourself at most often?
