New N.S. project hoping to solve ice time troubles

One of the fiercest competitions in hockey is waged outside the arena; in almost every community there’s a battle for precious ice time.

A new project in Nova Scotia is hoping to create a system where everyone wins.

“I always say to people I could have made a girls hockey league here 30 years ago. The issue wasn't the interest, but the ability to access the space,” said Christina Lamey, president of the Cape Breton Blizzard Female Hockey Association.

The Cape Breton Female Blizzard Hockey Association will soon have a new home once construction is completed at the Canada Games Complex in Sydney, but it was a struggle to find available ice for games and practices over the last few years.

Lamey says the Nova Scotia Female Hockey League has about 120 teams, with nearly 2,000 games a season, but not one association has a home arena or ice surface dedicated to them.

“There are hockey leagues and groups that have had the same ice time for 30 or 40 years, back to the days when other people were not permitted to access the ice time or the sport, so it’s a legacy of discrimination,” said Lamey.

A new project called "Open Ice" is hoping to change that.

Behind the initiative is Future of Hockey Lab, a Nova Scotia-based organization created two years ago to help solve complex challenges in the game.

“These problems are unaffordable ice times, ice times that require extensive travel, there's scheduling inefficiencies, there's favouritism and bias towards certain good ice times,” said Amy Walsh, co-founder.

Walsh says when data is collected from arenas across the province, it will then be made public.

The goal is to use what is found as leverage for change.

“So we're going to take that consolidated identified data to enable better decisions, create efficiencies around scheduling, infrastructure, usage, funding, etc,” said Walsh.

The hope is to not only bring change in this province, but across the country.

For more Nova Scotia news visit our dedicated provincial page.