Four teams, coloured pinnies, a five minute running clock and no offsides. The hockey was raw. The point was not the hockey.
The plan was simple. Split the campers into four teams, hand out coloured pinnies, set a five minute running clock and let them play.
What followed was not simple at all. It was loud, breathless, frequently ridiculous, and for the parents pressed against the boards it was unexpectedly hard to watch dry-eyed.
The Open Ice Cup ran on the afternoon of Monday 16 March, the first day of March Break Camp at Ted Reeve. It was a round robin with a final, played under stripped down rules: no offsides, no icing, instant puck resets. The idea was to take hockey down to its most basic impulse and let beginners feel what competing feels like.
Four teams of four took the ice. Team MCW in red, Team Platform in blue, Team Pizza Pizza in yellow, Team PHPA in white. The tournament was presented by Hockey Stick Man, who supply the equipment every camper takes home.
The hockey, objectively, was rough. Pucks squirted loose. Children collided gently at centre ice. There were long stretches where the entire group drifted into one corner and left three quarters of the rink empty. But there was real hockey in there too: a clean pass from one five year old to another, a goaltender dropping to both pads and making the save, a breakaway that ended without a goal and with both arms in the air anyway, because getting the length of the ice alone was the achievement.
“You could see it click,” says Cameron Gaunce, the former NHL defenceman who coached through the week. “The moment a kid realises they are playing a real game, against a real opponent, with real teammates counting on them. You cannot teach that feeling.”
CP24 was at the arena that morning and filmed the tournament. CTV News attended on the Tuesday for the first on-ice session and featured the camp as well.
After the final buzzer there was an award ceremony. A Player of the Day was named and given prizes donated by the Professional Hockey Players’ Association. The child stood at centre ice holding a trophy, surrounded by teammates they had known for about six hours.
“Nobody cared who won,” Adair says. “They cared that they played.”
Nobody cared who won. They cared that they played.
Two organisations, one in the classroom and one at the rink, exploring a pathway that carries a student from a school assembly to a pair of skates.
Four days of ice and dryland, free lunch, and a full set of equipment for every camper.
Where the programme stands after its first three cycles, and what the numbers mean.
