Hockey has a very different look these days in Memorial Gardens. The concession area where fans line up to buy a hot dog has been transformed into a makeshift dressing room.
That’s the way hockey looks now in 2020 as arenas reopen to the public. Here in North Bay, Memorial Gardens opened its doors for the first time on Tuesday.
“Children are coming to the rink dressed,” explained Melinda Fry, Manager of Sports and Events at the City of North Bay.
“We have set up 30 chairs in the north concourse and 30 separate chairs in the lobby. We have five coaches seats in between the two areas. Kids coming in with masks along with their parents, they are putting on their skates and once they are ready to put their helmet on they can remove their mask and go skating for the duration of the practice.”
Fry says the city has collaborated with a number of groups to figure out their reopening plans.
"We have worked closely with other arena's in our region, the Ontario Hockey Federation and Hockey Canada, we have also had a close working relationship with our local health unit to make sure we are following all the COVID-19 procedures to bring people into the building,” she said.
Unlike Toronto arenas, North Bay is allowing one parent per play to watch and sit in a secure section of the rink with the majority of the seating closed off to the public. Of course, city staff at the rink will be making sanitization a priority between ice rentals.
“We are sanitizing in between all the rentals that we have a clean surface for everyone to start on again,” she said.
For Fry, a hockey mom herself, it was a rewarding experience seeing kids return to the ice.
"We have not had ice in this building here since March, we pulled all the ice out of all our three facilities back in March, so it was so awesome Tuesday morning to see and hear all the little kids' chatter and nice to hear skates hitting the ice and the coaches whistles blowing, she said.
“I think it provides a really nice opportunity for kids to get back to some type of normal because normally quite a few of them would have been skating already during the summer months over at Pete Palangio so I think it has been a long time coming.”
Fry says rentals have been fairly steady once the reopening was announced as part of the provinces Stage 3 reopening.
She says Pete Palangio arena will also reopen on September 8.
