The forecast for Sunday, January 7th was sunny and minus 9 celsius. I started making phone calls & texts on Thursday - before I knew it, I had 10 guys interested in playing some backyard hockey on Sunday afternoon. Mother Nature was on my side as well as she dropped the temperatures to -12C overnight on Saturday so after watching the Lions/Saints game, I donned the cold gear, grabbed my homeboni and put some coats of fresh ice on the rink. After taking in the beautiful scene in the backyard, it was time for bed - going to be a long day tomorrow.

I awoke to horror as I looked out my bedroom window to see it snowing. How much fell? When did it start? Did it ruin the fresh ice I laid down last night? I don't have time because I have a league game at 11AM and I slept in. I'll worry about it after my game.

While playing the league game, it stopped snowing. I get home at 12:15 (luckily the local rink is 2 minutes away) and grab a shovel to see if there are any rough spots. There is about 1-2 cm on the ice but thankfully it looked like the water froze completely before the snow started falling. No need to flood - crisis averted!

Guys were showing up around 2PM so I built a little fire close to the rink, got the shovels and pucks ready. It was going to be a great day. We ended up having 8 guys show up for hockey, two guys put on the goalie equipment, 6 skaters to make 3 teams of 2 and it was game on. We played games to 3 goals, winner stays on and once in awhile the loser scrapes/shovels the ice. We managed to get in 2 hours of hockey before some of them had to leave or before the old legs gave out, then it was inside to eat some pizza, watch some football and some Sens hockey. (We don't need to mention the amount of beer that was drank) All in all it was a glorious day for backyard hockey.

The best news - it's a similar forecast for this Sunday and I am already getting text messages and phone calls. It's a great time of the year!

Surprising only one person got checked over the boards (and it wasn't me) and only one other person complained about a body check (and it wasn't me - receiving or giving).

Wife has a girls' skate night planned for Friday on the rink and I'm sure there will be lame music being played then as well.

Super jealous of the turnout! each year ive made my rink people tell me they cant wait to come skate, and ask whens the rink going to be ready. I try to get friends out for a skate and its a bunch of lazy no's and excuses.
I have dreams of adding on and making everything really nice, but if im the only one skating I dont want to sink the money into it to create something great that only I will use when the current simplicity is great for one skater.

Chris - you just need better friends! :-D

I think the biggest draw to my rink is the fact that I have two sets of goalie equipment for the rink so there is a good chance that 'someone' will end up with gear one and be a target. Added to that - the majority of my friends are hockey players that I play with on a weekly basis.

its built all right....and the slushy snow sunk a corner! >:o the corner is now refrozen to a point of standing being ok...I just put a layer of water on, but it was the first time I tried warm water (realized I had a washer dryer hookup out in the garage I forgot about!) and my weak link hose proved to be my weak link kinking every 5 seconds and then every time I fixed it my towel froze to the rink! which then cracked one of my home-boni pipes when it caught me unawares! ...that didn't go to well!!
Now I have to rebuild my home-boni and buy a scraper to fix a few really bumpy spots caused by the slushy mix that fell the other day...what a process!!!

Chris, that reminds me of another lesson I learned this weekend. Do not drink copious amounts of alcohol (I'll ballpark it at 14 pints of beer) and then get the bright idea that you are going to work on the rink at 12:30 AM after a severe winter storm. Snowblower was hauled out of the garage (my poor neighbours!), cleared the rink, then a scrape... this was followed by helping a friend of the ice who thought she could skate at 1AM after drinking all night and then flooding the rink. The flood was brought to an immediate halt at the first corner of the rink where I pushed my homeboni too hard and SNAP! In my drunken stupor, I could not find my replacement parts and I apparently gave my backup one to a friend last year for his rink. I was left to finish flooding the rink with an 'L' instead of a 'T'. Very difficult to say the least. Saturday morning was off to the hardware store for replacement parts - flooding resumed at 2:30PM and the rink was glass before my 49ers kicked off at 4:30PM.

Moral of the story... friends shouldn't let friends drink and flood.

Haha good stuff. This cold really helped my rink out! This morning I went out and bought steel pipes and painted and drilled already and just need to attach a towel and hose and start resurfacing again! yay steel over pvc!