The city of North Bay continues to mull over various options for a new ice arena.
At a Wednesday meeting, the number of locations which started at two has now grown to five.
See related story: Narrowing down arena options extremely difficult, now up to five!
North Bay Battalion Head Coach Stan Butler, who hasn't been consulted during the process, does have his opinion.
The longtime Battalion bench boss has been involved with Team Canada overseas with the World Junior team as well as with Canada’s best under-18’s and most recently was an assistant coach for Team OHL in the Canada-Russia series last fall which included a game here in North Bay.
Butler believes what’s best for the city would be to have the two new pads built behind Memorial Gardens which would be ideal if the city wants to host major events such as the World Under-17 Challenge which took place in Sault Ste. Marie last year and Timmins in 2010.
In Sault Ste. Marie, the majority of games were hosted at the Essar Centre, home of the Greyhounds and some contests were at the John Rhodes Community Centre.
“The only way they could host it is if they put the other two rinks behind here and have enough dressing room facilities that they could have their own permanent dressing room,” said Butler during his Wednesday Battalion media conference.
“Right now unfortunately in the rink here we do not have enough dressing rooms to host a Telus Cup, or Under-17 Challenge, or Esso Cup girls midget championship as well.”
The Under-17 World Hockey Challenge is taking place in the Dawson Creek area of Northeastern B.C. and would likely be an ideal event for North Bay to target with its new facilities in tow.
Past world under-17 championships have drawn attendance ranging from 30,000 to 44,000 with hockey teams from USA, Finland, Russia, Germany, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
See related story: Sault to host World Under-17 Hockey Challenge this fall
As for economic impacts, when Sydney, Nova Scotia hosted the 2014 challenge, spending by spectators and organizers totalled $1.8 million.
