On saturday something happened in Budapest that rarely happens in hockey anywhere in the world, two new ice rinks had their opening ceremonies. In the early afternoon Kanadai Magyar Hokiklub (KMH) opened up a covered rink next to the Tüskecsarnok, later in the afternoon MAC had the opening ceremony for the newly covered Kisstadion. Both rinks have employed the same technology to cover the rinks, basically in simplified terms the rinks are covered with a giant tent.
The KMH ice rink has been given the name of Tüskesátor because of the location next to the Tüskecsarnok. The rink itself is found in the middle of a soccer pitch with the locker rooms next to the pitch. The hockey club plans to keep the rink where it is after the Tüskecsarnok is completed, right now the completion date is set at end of summer, beginning of autumn of 2014.
After the club had practices at a number of ice surfaces since their founding they finally have a place to call their own.
"This is great that we have our own place, one thing that you need to help the development of young players is ice and ice time," said head of hockey operations, Gary Clark. Bob Leslie, consultant for KMH reiterated with a smile what Clark said. "This is a fantastic event, you need ice, it is really important to have ample amount of ice [time], and on top, this is a great facility." It was great event that had a family cook out environment with kids from all age groups milling around and waiting to jump on the ice for the open skate session.
Couple hours later and on the other side of town MAC had their festivities. Coach Tibor Marton said "this means that we will have more ice time for every age group, now that the rink is covered it is up to the kids and the coach to take advantage of this." The highlight of the day after a reception in the lobby of the facility was the match between MAC and HC L.A. Stars.
For both organization this day was huge because it is one tremendous step in their ultimate goal of not only developing hockey players but people who will become upstanding citizens. Junior national team coach Glenn Williamson summed up the underlying theme of the day "people might not realize how huge this is that Budapest has two new sheets of ice, kids need adequate amount of practice time and for this you need ice."
Photo: Dr. Gábor Nagy