The prevailing management of the rink has lost untold numbers of adults to the sport of ice hockey, as the only ice available is at the witching hour or later, and the Junior Club have reneged on their constitution to provide for both junior and adult ice hockey. This is possibly due to a combination of reasons - from the hike in costs of running ice on pad 2 to the speculation that ice can’t be put on pad 2 because the rink management allowed the plant to fall into disrepair they don’t have the will, don’t have the money or a combination of both to put that situation right.
The prevailing management of the rink (pad 1) mystifies me - the Devils have a team built for speed, but the ice they play on is slush at best, so we lose any home advantage we ever would have had for recruiting fast skaters. I’m no ice maintenance guy, but to get the most out of fast skaters, you need hard ice - 5 degrees of so lower than the slush we have which is more suited to public skating and ice dancers for their jumps and pirouettes. There is speculation that the reason that the state of the art plant facility has been equally poorly managed, and is unable to cope with the different needs of the primary ice users. perhaps there are justifications, but having regularly skated on the Pad 1 ice, the ice temperature differential would certainly be a reasoned explanation as to how a team of fast skaters never get the opportunity to perform at their best.
