Hockey notes of the day

•The Pasadena ice rink -- all 150 feet by 90 feet of it -- is adding two stick times on Tuesday nights -- at 6:30 and 7:45. There are also stick times at 7:45 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays. It can be crowded but at least it's a chance to get out there with the puck and skate a little.

•If you are hoping to see the Kings and Ducks meet in the second round of the playoffs, they both obviously need to win their first-round matchups and also have Detroit beat Phoenix and Chicago topple top-seeded Vancouver. This seems u-n-l-i-k-e-l-y.

•I got a note from a regular reader praising the Weekend Warrior hockey camps held throughout the U.S.; he had just attended one back east and wrote that it really improved his game. There is a camp coming up from May 12 to 15 at South Lake Tahoe. I perused the website and it looks great for basically anyone who can already skate -- you get a ton of ice time and a structured environment to learn the game. It's not cheap -- $725, not including lodging or travel there. 

--S.H.

Pasadena spring league still needs a few players

The lower/intermediate division at the Pasadena rink starts spring play on April 10.

The league is trying to expand from four to six teams and I hear one of the new teams still needs a few players. If you're interested, contact the rink at hockey@skatepasadena.com or call 626-578-0800.

There are only two divisions at the Pasadena rink -- lower and upper. The lower is being renamed intermediate to reflect the fact that most of the people playing in it have some hockey experience. If ringers are kept at bay, it's a good league for advanced beginners (some scrimmage and/or pickup experience), intermediates and older players.

It's a 12-game season with games on Sunday afternoons and evenings with an occasional Wednesday night game. The rink is only 150 feet long -- 50 feet shorter than an NHL rink -- and there are no showers. A full-size rink next door to the current facility is scheduled to open in September.

--S.H.

Tryouts for Pasadena spring league next week

Just a heads up: the current lower division league at the Pasadena rink is is trying to expand from four teams to six for the spring season that begins April 10 and runs through mid-July.

Tryouts for both the rink's upper and lower division leagues are Wednesday night, March 30, at 9 p.m. Here's the website.

It should hopefully be the final season on the 150-foot rink at the current facility; the fall season should be played on a new NHL-size rink to be built next door to the current facility on the Pasadena Convention Center grounds.

The lower division is basically for beginner through intermediate skilled players and it's coed, although there are only a handful of women in the league currently. It's not really a novice league -- although some novices with some get-go may like it -- and is best suited these days for someone with a little hockey experience, although you certainly don't have to be very good (I'm not). 

The idea of the tryouts is to determine if players should be in the upper or lower division and to try to place them on one of the teams. I'm captain of one of the teams and as leagues go, it's fun and pretty mellow. If you're on the fence, at least come out and skate in the tryout.

--S.H.

New ice rink apparently approved for Pasadena

The Pasadena City Council voted Monday night to relocate and expand the city's lone ice rink, according to rink supporters' Facebook page.

No, that's not the best source -- but I had to work late and that's all the information I could get at this hour.

The new rink will be constructed in the existing tent structure on the grounds of the Pasadena Convention Center. It will be a 200-foot-long NHL regulation size rink, replacing the 150-foot rink that has been in the convention center's old ballroom since the mid-1970s.

Convention center officials are saying the new rink will be complete by next September when the lease ends for the current facility.

More details tomorrow if I can get them.

--S.H.

Council to tackle Pasadena ice rink proposal on Monday

Looks like the Pasadena City Council is finally going to vote on building a full-size ice rink in the city at the Pasadena Convention Center. Here's the item on the agenda for Monday, Sept. 27: 

It is recommended that the City Council:

(1) Authorize the City Manager to issue a 10 year 2.5% annual interest bearing loan, not to exceed $1.5 million from City funds to the Pasadena Center Operating Company (PCOC), to be used for the ice rink relocation to the pavilion if the conditional use permit is granted; and

(2) Recognize and appropriate the expenditure of $1.5 million in PCOC Reserves for the ice rink relocation to the pavilion if the conditional use permit is granted. 

The staff report has some interesting tidbits. For one, it suggests the new rink will be there for 10 years and that the city will recover the full cost of the new rink. That's good because it has been proposed as a temporary structure until a permanent site for a rink could be found -- something that, quite frankly, looks hopeless. 

The report also suggests that regular users of the rink could get a $36 per month parking pass for the garage under the rink. That's not a bad deal for frequent skaters given that street parking in the area around the convention center can be scarce. 

We'll see how it goes Monday. After years of talking about a new rink, nothing is a sure thing when it comes to our friends on the City Council who wouldn't know a puck if it bonked them in the noggin.

--S.H. 

Pasadena City Council: these guys seriously need their skates sharpened -- by which I mean brains, not skates!

And by "skates sharpened," I don't mean "skates." It's a metaphor!

Anyway, here's a spot of news. Remember last month when the City Council said they would discuss and vote on building a new temporary ice rink at their Sept. 20 meeting?

Well, surprise surprise...the item isn't on the Council's agenda for tonight's meeting and a representative for Councilman Steve Madison told me the details of the proposal are still being discussed. Madison, by the way, is the good guy on the City Council who supports keeping ice skating in Pasadena.

Attentive Puck Boy readers already know the basics. The current shrimpy rink loses its lease next fall with the Pasadena Convention Center. Unless the rink is moved next door to a tent structure -- as proposed -- ice skating could vanish from Pasadena.

Even the tent structure is not a permanent solution. It's seen as a holding spot until the Council "drops its nuts" -- as Jets coach Rex Ryan likes to say -- and decides to plunge some money into a new permanent rink. They had that chance last year but didn't take the plunge because of money and location concerns, the Council's go-to excuses.

Here's the city minutes from last month's Council meeting for those who need a summary of the conversation among Council members and the public. Of course, it's a summary written by city staff, so it's worded kind of generously in my view.

For example, nowhere does it include the sentence "And then the City Council took a useless vote to continue the conversation at a later date as a feeble attempt to fool the public that they were doing something when in fact they were doing nothing because most of them secretly despise the thought of children having fun while ice skating."

Or maybe some of them don't believe skating belongs in a place where the thermometer regularly rises above 80 degrees (note: it gets warm in Canada, too!). Or maybe some of them had a bad public skate experience when they were younger. I remember falling on my head on the ice when I was five at a birthday party for a friend at the Cincinnati Gardens. Didn't prejudice me!

The lack of action is a serious concern and I am starting to fear the worst. More soon...

--S.H.

Pasadena City Council to hockey players: you are a lower breed and we don't need you, want you or care about you!

That's the kind of headline you get after Puck Boy imbibes a large coffee on an empty stomach at Peets, ruminating about why elected officials in GeezerTown are in such an un-hurry to secure a future for ice skating and hockey here.

Attentive readers of this blog -- which, btw, is henceforth emerging from its summer hibernation -- already know the basic story. In 2009, the Pasadena City Council balked at building a new ice rink with two sheets of ice, citing concerns over cost and location. 

Then, in July of this year, the Council again balked at relocating the current rink next door to an existing tent structure, citing concerns over....cost and location.

Councilman Steve Madison is clearly for preserving ice skating in Pasadena, but I can't say the same about the rest of the Council who clearly have issues with anything having to do with...COST AND LOCATION. Those are their go-to keywords for wishing the issue would just go away.

In case you were the curious sort, the cost of building an entirely new rink in eastern Pasadena was nearly $20 million. Some of that would have been repaid to the city through revenues generated by the rink. The cost of relocating the rink to the tent structure is a $1.5-million loan to be repaid to the city over 10 years. 

In the meantime, a member of my hockey team spotted this intriguing little story in the Star News about a proposed $171-million renovation of the Rose Bowl. My favorite sentence:

The new press box, which will take a few years to construct, is expected to have six levels and include broadcast media rooms, suites and premium club seats, concession stands and an underground kitchen. 

So there you go. The city is willing to invest in premium club seats for corporate fat cats and a new kitchen for sportswriters who may starve to death over the course of a three-hour contest. But when it comes to investing in a sport actually played by city residents, the Council basically couldn't give two hairy poops about a sport played by its own residents.

Tonight is the night we find out if the Pasadena City Council definitely hates children, figure skaters and adult beer league hockey players

Wow. Has it really been almost three weeks since I've updated this thing? My bad. I got busy with actual employment and went AWOL on Puck Boy.

Which is a shame, because there's a lot to report: my team won its first game and I actually didn't completely suck in the game. More about that later this week, now that I've settled down a bit. But only a bit.

In the meantime, there's big news waiting to happen tonight when the Pasadena City Council meets and decides whether to relocate the current ice rink at the Convention Center to a new home next to the current rink.

All the details are in the previous post, but the bottom line is this: If the Council votes yes, my team gets to skate on a full-sized NHL rink next summer instead of the current elfin configuration. If the Council votes no, the current rink will lose its lease with the city's Convention Center in Sept. 2011 and skating will likely come to an end in Pasadena after 35 years at the current rink and many more years at a prior rink that closed in the early 1960s.