Greg Hansen: Tucson has one sheet of ice — and, somehow, one killer hockey team

Tucson is a one-sheet town, and I mean that in the nicest way. Given the circumstances, any other team in the Calder Cup playoffs might already be two sheets to the wind.

Instead, the Tucson Roadrunners beat the Texas Stars 2-1 in overtime Wednesday night, continuing to do more with less, doing their best to turn the AHL playoffs into their own personal igloo.

The other 15 teams in the American Hockey League playoffs all are blessed with more ice than the Roadrunners, and although it can be a significant disadvantage, you’d never be able to tell by the Roadrunners’ 46 victories this season, or their 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven, second-round series against Texas.

The Roadrunners have a single sheet of ice available for games and practices, and somehow they’ve made it work.

Tucson’s ice shortage has nothing to do with the climate. When an east-side public skating rink closed 11 years ago, the Tucson Convention Center became the only place a hockey-lovin’ Tucsonan could play or watch hockey.

Here’s what it means: the Roadrunners can’t always practice at their convenience. That’s not how the AHL competition does it. By comparison, last year’s Calder Cup champions, the Grand Rapids Griffins, practice at Griff’s Icehouse, which has two regulation (200 feet by 85 feet) sheets of ice, in addition to the 10,380-seat Van Andel Arena, where they play 38 AHL games per year.

“You might find this hard to believe, but the greater Phoenix area has 13 sheets of ice, and they need more, they’re packed,” says Tucson attorney Ryan Dejoe, a hockey-born and hockey-bred Ohio goalie who is the coaching director of the Tucson Junior Roadrunners. “We do a lot of traveling to Phoenix.”

In the two years since the Roadrunners revived professional hockey in Tucson, the Junior Roadrunners program has grown to more than 200 kids, aged 5-18, teams called the Mites, Squirts, Peewees, Bantams and Midget. Renting the ice goes from $450 to $725 per hour, and space is at a premium as the organization continues to grow.

Their precious ice time is mostly limited to Sundays, one of the busiest ice days at the Tucson Arena. The Junior Roadrunners spent $10,149 on ice rental in April alone.

And that’s just some of the demand for ice time. The Tucson Adult Hockey League has grown to 12 teams, and is at the mercy of the TCC’s crazy-busy schedule.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“We get what we can between concerts, the UA club hockey team, the Roadrunners, Monster Truck shows, horse shows, the Gem Show, you name it,” says Danny Plattner, a St. Louis native who created the adult league a decade ago.

“The Roadrunners’ arrival intensified and grew the interest in hockey here,” says Plattner, a mortgage executive who became a hockey fan for life when his father took him to a St. Louis Blues game 40 years ago. “We’ve only got 180 spots available in the (adult) league. If we had more ice — more available nights to play — it would really take off. We’ve got a waiting list.”

The Adult Hockey League schedule is typically squeezed into Mondays and Wednesdays from October to March. That’s when use of the Tucson Arena is at its highest.

Initially, the Arizona Coyotes and the Rio Nuevo people, among others who assisted in moving the Coyotes’ AHL affiliate from Springfield, Massachusetts, to Tucson Arena, hoped a second facility, a practice rink, would be in place late this year.

In the summer of 2016, Anthony LeBlanc, one of the principals in bringing the Coyotes to Arizona, said: “We would love to see a practice facility in Tucson sooner rather than later. It ultimately becomes a community rink, which is so important to us as we continue to grow the game.”

LeBlanc left the Coyotes last summer. Little progress was made. The demand for ice grows.

Tucson’s old ice rink, near the intersection of Kolb Road and Speedway Boulevard, is now owned by the U.S. State Department. There’s no more ice; the building is used to manufacture and distribute passports.

Dejoe and Plattner plow forward. Both await the day Tucson is again a two-sheet town and those from 5 to 50 get all the skating time they desire, although the Roadrunners — who sometimes have to drive to Phoenix to get suitable practice time — need it even more.

Before arriving in Tucson for the second round of the Calder Cup Playoffs, the Texas Stars practiced at both the H-E-B Center just outside of Austin, and, when necessary, have two more available ice facilities in the greater Austin area: The Pond Hockey Club, which has three sheets of ice, and the Chaparral Ice center.

But in Tucson, during the Calder Cup playoffs, the Roadrunners and the Tucson Arena are making the best of a problem Tucson has faced for centuries: an ice shortage.