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Very interesting article, I had no idea such a thing existed.
Who Needs Ice? Synthetic Surface Extends Season
Ice would not seem hard to come by in Fort Chipewyan, a tiny outpost on Lake Athabasca in northeastern Alberta. A small aboriginal community, it is accessible in winter only by a 100-mile road built from ice.
As in most places in Canada, hockey is vital to Fort Chipewyan. An indoor rink is flooded with water and frozen, which requires temperatures around 5 degrees Fahrenheit. But when spring comes, the community is accessible only by boat or seaplane, the ice road melts away, and with it, so does the hockey season.
For a small community like Fort Chipewyan, population 1,007, a refrigeration system for a year-round ice rink has been too expensive. But early this month hockey became a year-round sport as this isolated town celebrated the opening of what manufacturers call the first full-size synthetic hockey rink in North America.
“Hockey has always had a big place in the community, but without a refrigeration unit, after the ice is melted by April, there was no skating till the next year,” said Alecleon Courtoreille, who grew up in Fort Chipewyan and is responsible for maintaining its rink each winter. “The only thing we’d do is play floor hockey with a ball.”
When the roof on Archie Simpson Arena — and its natural, frozen rink — collapsed under the weight of snow in 2005, the town investigated buying a refrigeration unit to extend its three-month hockey season, but the nearly $2 million price tag and high yearly maintenance costs ended that possibility.
A synthetic rink cost $559,000 to install and requires a fraction of the maintenance. Players use real sticks and pucks and the same skates they wear on real ice.
Fort Chipewyan decided it could afford that.
Synthetic ice has been around for decades in various forms, but most of it was awful and left the marketplace wary. But its proponents argue that it is much improved.
“Back in the day, people didn’t know it, but it was just rinkboard,” said Rob Tallas, the goalie coach for the Florida Panthers, who previously sold hockey training franchises that used synthetic ice. “It was super thin, it would bubble in the heat and you would tack it down to wood to make the best of it.”
Perry Boskus, the owner of Global Synthetic Ice, has been skating on synthetic ice since the 1980s, when he worked for a manufacturer traveling to malls doing exhibitions.
“I was the guy handing out the skates, so I heard everyone’s complaints,” he said.
Ten years ago, Boskus began developing Super-Glide synthetic ice, which is now installed in the Fort Chipewyan rink. Boskus worked with polymer chemists to create a plastic with lubricant additives to lower the friction, introducing the latest formula in 2008. It requires a spray for optimal glide, but Boskus says it cannot be detected. Better interlocking of the underlying panels eliminated troublesome seams.
Several companies now manufacture a modern version, including XtraIce, a company based in Spain that has installed rinks in 40 countries.
Fort Chipewyan received three bids for its rink, and Jon Mulhall, the supervisor of facilities, said he was satisfied with all three.
“You can go forward and back, you can stop, you can turn and you can shoot the puck,” he said. “They were very comparable in that way.”
The cost was the primary attraction. A refrigeration unit can not only cost $1.5 million to $2 million, but maintenance can also run up to $300,000 a year.
The synthetic rink comes with a 10-year warranty. Its smaller environmental impact and the opportunity to skip the Zamboni in favor of a vacuum made the fake stuff an easy decision.
Fort Chipewyan will still use real ice in winter, flooding and freezing over the synthetic surface.
Georges Laraque, retired after playing 12 years in the N.H.L., believed enough in synthetic ice to have bought the rights to distribute Super-Glide in Canada.
“There’s not enough rinks out there,” Laraque said. “Kids have to skate at 5 or 6 in the morning or late at night because there’s no ice time available. This is a clean alternative for a city and something they can afford.”
-NY Times
