It was meant to be a festival — a full celebration of pond hockey. This is the casual version of the winter sport that kids first play on local ponds and outdoor rinks, often using their brother’s old skates. It’s a sport that adults enjoy for the fun of playing outside with friends in freezing temperatures.
In cold areas, playing hockey outdoors is not just a game. For many, it’s a part of life. The U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, scheduled for Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis this January, gathered more than 300 recreational teams from across the country to skate hard, have fun, and relax with an occasional beer. Most importantly, they were playing the game “the way nature intended.”
But the polar vortex, which had frozen the lake’s surface into a solid black sheet for the first time this winter, thawed too quickly. By the end of the first full week of play, the ice had become “sloppy,” with puddles on the surface and dangerously thin spots.
“This winter season has been like no other we can remember,” the tournament posted on Facebook, announcing the cancellation of the final weekend of play, and with it, the championship.
Around 10 miles away in North Minneapolis, pediatrician Chris Williams was thinking about his backyard rink. Earlier in the winter, like maybe hundreds of thousands of people across North America (though there are no exact statistics on this), Williams and his kids leveled their small yard with 80 bags of playground sand.
They spread a large tarp, built short side rails, filled the area with water, and hoped for a good freeze. After all, Minnesota is known for its harsh winters.
Williams had grown up playing outdoor hockey in this same neighborhood in the 1970s.
“When you get outdoors and skate,” he says, “it’s beautiful. Imagine a bright sunny day, a clear blue sky, the light reflecting off the snow. It’s in my soul.” He wanted his kids to experience that same happiness and sense of freedom that he had.
But this year’s weather was not kind to skaters. The rink finally froze when the polar vortex hit in January, but it melted just a week later, leaving it looking more like a soggy sandbox than a place to practice shots.
As the climate around the world changes quickly, what will happen to hockey, which relies on ponds, lakes, and outdoor rinks to support not only its professional players but also its everyday fans?
Years ago, pond hockey was played as far south as the suburbs of Washington D.C. Now, climate models show that by 2050, it will be too warm to play outdoors on natural ice in much of the eastern U.S. and large parts of southern Ontario and Quebec. By 2080, this could also be true for places like Edmonton and Saskatoon in western Canada.
However, players aren’t giving up easily. (After all, it’s hockey, and fighting is almost part of the game.)
People who own backyard rinks are collecting data on temperature and ice conditions, sharing that there are fewer and fewer opportunities to get on the ice. Hockey fans are raising money and spreading awareness, encouraging others to get involved and support political candidates who focus on climate change.
Even the National Hockey League is helping. Through its NHL Green program, the league is working to reduce carbon emissions, helping community rinks do the same, and encouraging fans to take action.
In 2014, Steve Baynes, an amateur defenseman from Helsinki, Finland, and his teammates began what has become a growing international movement. “We see ourselves as basic hockey guys who are concerned about the future,” he says. Now, Save Pond Hockey operates in five countries, including the U.S.
“Every pond hockey player will tell you pond hockey is one of the best things about life,” Baynes says. “We’re in this together to tackle climate change and help save this beautiful sport.”
Outdoor hockey as the solution
When middle-school hockey coach Lauren Guite was growing up in South Portland, Maine, her father, who worked two jobs, would wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. on winter mornings to water the ice on their family’s backyard rink. “That’s when the lowest temperature was,” she explains. “That’s when you can make the best ice.”
For many people living in cold areas, outdoor hockey isn’t just a game. It’s a way of life. “When you live in colder temperatures, you have fun in the winter. You don’t just hole up inside,” says Guite. She is one of the 2.3 million hockey players in the U.S., according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
Frozen ponds and outdoor rinks are free, so they make hockey accessible to people who might not otherwise be able to afford indoor ice time.
Pond hockey and hockey on outdoor rinks are where most professional players first learned the game. “I basically spent my childhood playing outdoor hockey, from the time I woke up to the time I went to sleep,” said Max Pacioretty of the Washington Capitals.
Ponds and outdoor rinks don’t just help people fall in love with the sport; they also make it possible for kids and adults who can’t afford indoor rinks to play.
“The ice time available to girls and boys in indoor rinks is not equal,” says Guite. “Outdoor hockey gives you access.”
When Williams, a pediatrician, and a minister decided to start a hockey team for local low-income kids, it was the free, outdoor rinks in Minneapolis’ public parks that allowed the kids to learn the game. Despite hockey’s popularity in Minneapolis, none of the kids had ever played indoors, because indoor ice time is expensive.
“Now, we have about 60 kids, ages 6 to 18,” says Williams. They’ve built a community and a strong bond while playing in the cold outdoor air. “When we have outdoor ice, the coaches get their sticks, the refs get their sticks, and we all play even when things are supposed to be over.”
This year, it has been hard to find ice to practice on. “The kids understand,” Williams says. “They’re ready to play, but there’s no ice. They’ve heard of climate change, and they understand that they’re seeing it happen.”
Data-driven
Around twelve years ago, before extreme weather became as intense as it is now, Professor Robert McLeman, an environmental scientist at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, and his colleague Professor Colin Robertson were trying to find a way to make climate change more relatable to large Canadian audiences.
Most people would never see a polar bear in its natural environment, they thought. So, the loss of arctic ice might feel too distant for people to care about. But weather and hockey are two things that Canadians talk about a lot. “Outdoor skating is something they can actually identify with,” McLeman says.
In 2012, McLeman and Robertson started RinkWatch, a project that works with the owners of more than 1,600 outdoor rinks to collect data on daily temperatures and the days when skating is possible. The project has used this data to create a model that tracks past trends and makes predictions for the future.
This summer, the team published a paper with a concerning title: “Future prospects for backyard skating rinks look bleak in a warming climate.” Their findings are alarming for hockey players, fans, and businesses.
(A 2015 report found that hockey is a $2.6 billion industry in Canada alone.)
“[M]any North Americans who build outdoor rinks every winter will, by mid-century, be living in areas where temperatures are only cold enough to do so occasionally,” McLeman’s team wrote. For those who grew up playing outdoor hockey, its loss will have far-reaching effects. “This has been a way of life for a lot of people,” McLeman says. “For many Canadians, this is part of the social fabric and it’s eroding.”
A growing number of hockey players have recognized the problem and are working hard to stop it.
Mike Richter, a two-time Olympian and one-time Stanley Cup winner who played 14 seasons as a goalie for the NHL’s New York Rangers, now runs a company that focuses on solar power and energy efficiency.
For him, the reason is simple. “Everyone wants clean air and water for their kids,” he says.
A lifelong environmentalist, Richter hopes athletes can help remove politics from the climate change discussion in the U.S. “I think there can be far more agreement on all of these things than we see in the public square,” he says.
Since 2015, Save Pond Hockey has been getting players involved in the issue and organizing outdoor fundraising tournaments in Finland and other parts of Europe, with the proceeds going to local organizations that fight climate change. “It’s all about fun climate action,” Baynes says, “which isn’t a term you hear a lot.”
The group is now reaching out to organizations and tournaments, including the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships. Several players from the newly formed U.S.-Canadian Professional Women’s Hockey League have already signed up to spread the word.
Architect and former college goalie Shelly Pottorf, from Save Pond Hockey USA, says: “My hope is that we can create a big enough field of caring to clean up hockey’s own climate footprint. We can convert indoor rinks to net-zero.
We have the technology.” She mentions all-electric, ice-smoothing Zambonis, along with ice-making systems that use energy-efficient heat pumps and renewable energy. “But we need the will power. How do you get people to protect the thing they love?”
Even the NHL is getting involved. Two of the 32 arenas where NHL teams play — Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and UBS Arena in Long Island, New York — are LEED-certified, meaning they meet certain green construction and operations standards.
The league is tracking and reducing its energy use, cutting carbon emissions from travel, and, through its NHL Greener Rinks Initiative, partnering with some of the 4,800 indoor community rinks in the U.S. and Canada to help them reduce carbon pollution from their facilities.
Chris Williams plays hockey on a backyard rink he built.
Minnesota’s winters are getting warmer
As Minnesota’s winters get warmer, Chris Williams and his kids are finding it harder to skate on their backyard rink. (Courtesy of Christopher Williams)
One hundred years ago, in January, the average temperature across Minnesota was 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The month before, in December 1923, the average temperature was 22.7 degrees.
This winter, the average temperature in December reached 30 degrees, which means part of the time the state was below the temperature where water turns into ice, and part of the month it was well above that. The numbers for January are still being calculated.
“I’m hoping it will freeze again,” Williams says. “Usually, we have my kids and all the neighbors’ kids come over. I was going to have my son’s hockey team over for a skating party.”
“My two younger kids are 11 and almost 9,” he continues. “I’m constantly explaining to them the laws of physics. At 10 degrees, ice freezes much faster. At 30 degrees, it’s not going to freeze very fast at all.”
