KENORA — Representatives of a new Kenora Junior A hockey team insist they'll take to the ice for the upcoming season, even if it means they're not playing their games in the city.
At Wednesday morning's Kenora city council meeting, Kenora Islanders president Tim Gosnell asked council to look into allocating ice time at the Moncrief Construction Sports Centre or the Bowman Electric Keewatin Memorial Arena for them to play in the Superior International Junior Hockey League.
The Kenora Islanders Junior A Team was sanctioned by Hockey Northwestern Ontario in April.
However, Gosnell said the team has run into a few barriers put up by city administration while trying to secure ice time.
After several conversations with city administration, Gosnell was told to provide the city with a mock schedule.
“Once that meeting was over — and that meeting went very well — I was thinking happy thoughts after that meeting that we were definitely moving forward," Gosnell said. "Two days after that we got a press release that the city was not giving us the ice time with no warning to us. We were shocked.”
The city’s press release stated that the reason the Islanders were not provided ice time was due to concerns raised by community groups, users of the arena, and the city. Additional time was necessary to consider a potential addition of a Junior A team and the impact on the full line-up of programming at the arena.
Gosnell said the organization wants to work with all of the other minor hockey leagues to allow players an opportunity to continue to play hockey in Kenora at the Junior A level.
In the meantime, Gosnell said the team has offers from municipalities within the Kenora district to use their arenas, with Vermilion Bay being one potential host.
“We ended up making a sitting with Vermilion Bay and kind of giving them a commitment to do some games there because we did say right from the beginning that we would be doing puck drop in 2023. We were hopeful it would be in one of the Kenora arenas. That’s not happening right now,” Gosnell said.
Ultimately the Junior A hockey team would like to play and practice hockey in Kenora, even if ice time could be allocated during the day for practice.
“In our opinion, it would help the city out in costing for ice,” said Gosnell.
A major selling point for bringing in a Junior A hockey team into Kenora would be the economic spin-off the organization would provide, with out-of-town teams and officials using hotels and visiting restaurants during the winter months.
Coun. Kelsie Van Belleghem told Gosnell that the arenas are taxpayer-funded recreation facilities housing a variety of programs outside of hockey, which is why a review of the ice allocation policy is necessary to get the scope of how much the arenas are being used.
“We have to make sure it’s an equitable space for all groups regardless of whether they’re the most profitable piece of the puzzle. When we are looking at this ice allocation policy, I want to be clear what is a priority for me is that youth groups are not the ones who are bearing the brunt of this,” Van Belleghem said.
Coun. Lindsay Koch asked about what the Islanders require for space inside the arenas.
“It would be ideal that we have our own change room. We know going into the Kenora arena at this stage that’s not going to happen. We are willing to work with what we have for now and then to look in the long term would be to have our own change room in some capacity,” answered Gosnell.
When Coun. Robert Bernie asked what kind of revenue would the Islanders be contributing to the city, but Gosnell couldn’t provide a definite figure.
The current ice rates for the city of Kenora are $115 per hour, and the Islanders are looking to play 10 to 15 games during the season in Kenora with practice time, according to Gosnell.
