Sadly the outdoor rink in the Bronx did not reopen this season. I'm not sure what the exact cause is, but I recall it had only a limited budget in order to promote the opening of a more permanent facility in the area. This will be accomplished when the Kingsbridge Armory site opens in 2017.
The website for Van Cortlandt says there's a chance it will be back next year though. This is too bad because they really did a great job last season with the upgrades, such as benches, full height glass, and heated changing rooms. I really enjoyed those cold nights under the stars, and the El train, playing pond hockey with Steve and the boys (and that one girl from Michigan).
Hopefully it's back again next year as outdoor pond hockey is a truly unique experience.
New York Hockey Experience
The life and times of a hockey player and fan in the Big Apple.
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Beer Hockey Philisophy
This photo sums up how one needs to play adult recreational hockey. Beer and pizza post-game celebration win, lose, or draw. The difficulty, as my team has had the last few weeks, is just finding a pizzeria open that late.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Shooting Targets
My building recently added a golf cage to the basement gym
area. I noticed there’s enough room on
the concrete outside the cage to use for ProPucks and do some hockey target practice. I used some spare bungee cords to hang up a
few beer cans as targets. Hitting them
gives off a very gratifying crunch.
Really good timing as I need to work on my
shot accuracy now that I finally got my wristshot power worked out last
winter. Still need to get better with my
slapper, but honestly I always prefer a snappy wrister.
I was legit impressed with how my shots were at least
shooting around the area of the can I was trying to hit. But those cans are damn tiny, so I mostly
missed them. Ironically enough the first
one I hit was a top shelf backhand. Also
hitting the 5-hole can seemed most difficult for some reason.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Kingsbridge Armory
North America’s largest indoor winter sports facility is
coming to the Bronx! In case you missed
the news, Mayor Bloomberg and his cohorts announced Kingsbridge Armory will be
converted in sports facility housing 9 ice rinks, 1 of which will have also
have a 5,000 seat arena. I had heard
about this project last year when the Rangers and Mark Messier became attached
to it, but by no means did I think it would get the green light. Seriously, like Jagr once said, and I’m
paraphrasing here, “hockey in New York is the fifth, or maybe sixth, popular
sport, right behind golf.” Well come 2018,
when the project is expected to be complete, the Bronx to become a
hotbed for all hockey activity in New York City.
Read more about the rink: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/kingsbridge-armory-house-world-largest-ice-skating-center-article-1.1326481
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Van Cortlandt Park Ice Rink
This past winter a new
ice rink opened its doors in the Bronx’s Van Cortlandt Park. Previously it was the only borough in the
city lacking a rink. Not only that, but
the rink was outdoors! I heard it about
it thanks to the news and facebook, since it’s operated by the same company
which does World Ice Arena and City Ice Pavilion. Typically I don’t head up to the Bronx much,
but thanks to a good friend of mine, big Steve G, I had an excuse to go visit regularly
this past winter.
Previously Steve and
I played outdoors in the winter at Lasker Rink in Central Park. Due to circumstances, we ended up both not
registering there this season. During
the holidays Steve shot me a message to take a visit up north at Van
Cortlandt’s new rink for pond hockey. It
turns out this was the same neighborhood he grew up in. Next thing you know it was Thursday night and
after a quick 22 minute drive from North Flushing, I made it to the rink.
Parking at the rink is really simple thanks to the metered
parking on the street right next to it.
Because of the meters which are in effect until 10pm, there’s ample
spaces available to jump right out and into the facility. The facility is an outdoor rink built atop
fenced in tennis courts. Next to it is a
building, which appears to be temporary for the winter. There’s no locker rooms, although there are
bathrooms in a separate temporary building which you walk outside to get to. But it’s not really an issue because the
place is pretty much dead around the time pond hockey starts. On average we would only have about 4 skaters
every Thursday, so it wasn’t a big deal changing in front of 3 other dudes
doing the same thing.
The rink itself is a bit different. There are literally only boards, no
glass. Because of this you were advised
to keep your shots low. There are no
goalies either for pond hockey. Instead
you shoot on mini-goals, like the ones
used in knee hockey, albeit made of metal. Early in the season I did want to work on
raising the puck with a new SE16 stick Ray had given me. I went to one end of the ice and swung the
puck up high. It really looked like it
was going to sail straight out of the rink and right into the glass window of
the building, but thankfully I didn’t have enough on it to go that far. Whew.
Although the last night we went there I did ring one off the crossbar, but
thankfully this was on the other end of the ice and the puck just went over the
chain-link fence into the park.
It wasn’t packed since the rink is in its first season. We did however get to meet a rotating cast of
players who would show up every week as Steve and I were typically the only
regulars. The small amount of players
made the games casual and fun, and best yet you really felt like you were out
there on the ice alone on a lonely cold winter night. Not only do you get ample time with the puck,
but it really gave you a lot of ice time to work on things, such as I did to
practice hockey stops on my offside foot.
I started off very awkward, but by the end of the season I had finally
gotten the muscle memory down.
There’s really no better way to experience ice hockey than outdoors
in the winter in a park. It’s why I
liked playing as Lasker Rink so much, and it holds true at Van Cortlandt as
well. In fact Van Cortlandt beats out
Lasker, because it’s also located right next to the street under the shadow of
the elevated 1 train. On one side you
get views of darkened outlines of trees, while on the other you get sounds from
the train rolling into the station and applying air brakes. Very uniquely New York.
Playing out there with Steve was a pleasure. We were able to play 2 on 2, do drills, joke
around on the ice, and then head out for a few beers a Riverdale Diner down the
road. A true hockey winter experience. The rink closed up shop for the season last
month, but I’m looking forward to seeing it again next year. I did bring my helmet camera one night, which
you can see the highlights below:
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Skating Dead Jerseys
Originally written last October. Forgot to hit post. ;-)
It was a complete bitch to make, but after over a month in development, the team jerseys finally came in. I’m probably biased, but I think they’re really sweet looking. The logo is 100% original, and I specifically designed it as a simple single color stencil for the jersey. I kept our original green/white color scheme as well.
It was a complete bitch to make, but after over a month in development, the team jerseys finally came in. I’m probably biased, but I think they’re really sweet looking. The logo is 100% original, and I specifically designed it as a simple single color stencil for the jersey. I kept our original green/white color scheme as well.
Putting together the logo was a real pain in the ass. I won’t go over every pain staking detail,
but converting the small tiny logo I had made last spring into something that
could full on be printed in huge size on a jersey was hard. Had to learn a bunch of stuff in Photoshop
and Illustrator. In late August I made a
first attempt at a logo and printed it on a t-shirt celebrating our
championship from last season. After
that I made a bunch more tweak to get to the final design.
For the actual jersey printing I went with Hockey Tron. They had both the jersey color I was looking
for, kelly green, and they could screen print the jerseys for us too. It broke down to $28 for the jersey, logo,
name, and number. Pretty good deal. I did try to go with Hockey Giant, Hockey
Monkey, and even a local store; but they all either never got back to me or
took way too long to answer questions.
Hockey Tron did a great job at responding immediately, putting all the
info on their website, and making it really easy to place the order online. They did forget to send me one extra blank,
but quickly responded back and are sending me a replacement already.
Initially I was weary of their jersey quality as I had never
seen one before. I only even thought
about getting Hockey Tron jerseys because someone on the SAS forum Hockey
Players thread posted a little info about them as their rink used them for
house leagues. When I got the jerseys I
was worried they might be too thin, but it’s actually really great as it makes
them very breathable. The shoulders are
double-layered for extra strength, but then rest is kept light. They still feel high quality and strong
though. Overall a great buy.
We may not be a pro team, but at least we now had a pro
look. If you want to join our fan club, you can also buy this as a t-shirt: http://www.redbubble.com/people/loqieu/works/9406304-skating-dead-hockey-club
Thursday, September 27, 2012
The Skating Dead, Season 3
The Skating Dead arrive for Season 3 at World Ice Arena tonight at 10pm! Talk about life after death. As recently as 3 weeks ago I thought this team was going to have to take a season off. But after showing up for the free try out skate, we found enough people to make it work. After a frantic month of trying to put the team together, it all comes to fruition tonight when we face-off against Local 3.
This season should be very exciting as not only have we ordered custom jerseys like a real team, which hopefully should arrive in 2 weeks, but also because a bunch of teams from Midnight Hockey are joining in. Add them to the 3 house teams from World Ice and we’ve got the makings of a legit league, finally.
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