New Haven has an ice rink with an issue that is hard to see past

As late October ushers in unduly warm temperatures of 60 degrees Fahrenheit and above, the Albertus Magnus women’s ice hockey team is arriving to its home ice at the Ralph Walker Skating Rink for an early-season game. Upon arriving at the rink, a little-known sight welcomes the players, fans and staff to the game. An eerie thick fog replaces the clarity of the ice rink with visibility that is essentially non-existent. For fans, looking through the glass reveals very little and even when the glass is cleared off, the internal haze takes over the role of obstructing your view. Meanwhile, for the players on the ice, teammates who stand five feet away from each other are nothing more than a mirage in the mist. And if you are going to try to look for the small puck sliding across the ice, you may as well be looking for a fly in a sandstorm because it could be right on top of you and you still won’t see it.

To the average person who doesn’t know that this is a semi-normality for the Ralph Walker Skating Rink, the impeding fog would prompt immediate concerns regarding the location's potential safety and visibility issues. In extreme cases when it gets to a much too dangerous point, the game may indeed be moved or postponed, however the teams usually have to deal with these foggy issues without an apparent discussion of a fix ever being had. So if the fans, staff and players are not able to see at game time, how do they deal with the challenge when it does arise?

Well if you rewind to about an hour and a half before game time the Albertus players take the ice, not to warm up, but to squeegee the inside of the glass in order to make the game viewable for the fans. The sports information director arrives, gets into his booth and turns on a space heater facing the glass as he starts to use a mini squeegee to make the ice viewable for the stating of the game. Both teams take the ice for warm-ups and shortly after the players hit the ice, despite their earlier efforts it begins to fog up once again making the visibility for both players inside and fans outside extremely minimal.

Throughout the game the athletes struggle to find their way on the ice and locate the puck because they simply can’t see through the fog. This begins to make the game a much more physical rather than tactical one adding to the danger. Why does this happen? Partially because of the indoor-outdoor nature of Albertus Magnus College’s home ice rink. 

A rink that appears to be usable year round, however, there have been instances where the ice becomes much too difficult and unsafe to play in due to the indoor-outdoor aspect of the building making the space severely foggy. While the rink has a roof, there are no sides present leaving it only partially enclosed. When the outside temperatures are not as cold as the ice the warm air filters into the arena through those open sides, then that warm air begins to cool and the water vapor condenses into small suspended droplets, thus creating fog. The warmer it is, the worse and more thick the fog gets. 

Shawn Roche, director of men’s ice hockey operations at Quinnipiac University, oversees a fully indoor ice rink.

He said, “The ice conditions are all dependent on the air temperature and humidity in the building or outside.”

For an indoor-outdoor rink that has a roof but no sides, the outdoor humidity would play an even larger role, which is what Albertus Magnus hockey has had to deal with.

Albertus Magnus women’s ice hockey player Amber DeJonge said, “I love our rink, although playing in the fog does make it difficult as 90 percent of the time when it fogs up you can't see across the ice, which can make it a little dangerous when we're practicing or playing.”

Imagine skating on the ice in full pads with blades on your feet in the complete darkness. That’s essentially the visibility that these players have when the fog is at its worst. While it doesn’t happen often, it still happens enough to be thought about and recognized.

It’s not only the players on the ice that are affected.

It also affects the fans that are trying to watch the game. They travel to New Haven to watch their friends, family or classmates and instead end up watching a room of fog while listening to the announcements of goals they did not see.

It’s almost as though in the sparse games when the stadium is fogged up, the fans are essentially listening to a radio broadcast of the game while sitting in a room of fog. 

The sports information staff at Albertus Magnus is also affected when they are trying to stat or record the game and cannot see through the glass. 

Brendan Faherty, the sports information director at Albertus Magnus College, said “For the SIDs, and anyone that needs to see the game and record what's going on, yeah, that's a little bit of a pain. But they have squeegees there that sometimes do the job -- and defoggers.”

How can the game be stated accurately or filmed effectively if you can’t see through the fog for a majority of it?

Players may be losing out on assists being recorded or a higher faceoff percentage just because the sports information staff simply can’t see it.

And what about the game footage? Can the staff even count the plus minus stat after the game? Can the team effectively watch film with the block of fog ruining its view?

While there may be squeegees and defoggers available, they do not always work effectively or enough to make all of these problems go away. More permanent solutions could and should be discussed moving forward because this issue won’t go away any time soon. In fact it will most likely get worse.

Albertus Magnus College President Camille recognized the budding issue and said, “Of course in today’s weather patterns, the warmer winter temperatures make the open-air nature of Ralph Walker a challenge at times for maintaining quality ice and playing conditions.”

William Dixon, the City of New Haven youth and recreation department deputy director, spoke about the issues briefly and said, “It’s an outdoor rink. The weather could change. It could make it a foggy situation if it gets too warm and you got the ice running.”

While the problem is typically dealt with in house with squeegees and defoggers, there have also been instances where the fog has gotten so severe that the teams have to move their game to another location. 

DeJonge said, “It just happens in the beginning of our season, primarily during October, early November, when the temperature doesn't get to a low enough number or when it rains. It makes it difficult, but we were lucky that it only had to happen once or twice.”

Difficult because the team will have to adjust their schedule to make time for travel for a home game and oftentimes change the start time of the game as well. The team will have to move their equipment onto a bus and travel from New Haven to Bridgeport, through traffic, just to get to the arena. Then, they have to unload all of their equipment and wait for the youth hockey games to end before they start their warm-ups. Suddenly a game that was supposed to be in New Haven at 5:30 p.m. could then be taking place in Bridgeport at 6:30 p.m.

One of the times this season that a game was moved proved to be a significant one. The Albertus Magnus women’s ice hockey inaugural game was moved to the Wonderland of Ice in Bridgeport from the Ralph Walker Skating Rink. In the article presented by Albertus Magnus it stated that the reason for this change was “inclement weather”. 

While the change in venue may not have had too much of an impact on the school, it did impact the turnout for this historic event.

Faherty said, “We treated it like every other game, we just added the element of a puck drop and we brought a carpet over. That was the original plan anyways. So, I don't think anything changed in that regard. It's just maybe if other people who were invited, people like higher up or something, maybe couldn't make it that day.”

DeJonge shared a similar sentiment as she said, “I think the only thing it affected was the amount of people that could go since a lot of people couldn't commute to Bridgeport since many people don't have cars and the buses weren't going to Bridgeport, but other than that they handled the transition very smoothly and we were able to get a locker room there and know enough ahead of time to make it all work.”

While nothing changed too much for the athletic communications staff and the players, it still meant that the inaugural game was not actually played on home ice because the weather being warm and rainy could not permit it happening at the indoor-outdoor facility. This is something that will be remembered in the history of Albertus women’s ice hockey and it wasn’t even at their own rink with a full house of fans and faculty.

So, if there have been these serious issues popping up due to the rink being partially outdoor, no matter how frequent the issues are, why has a more permanent solution never been discussed?

What happens when it isn’t just two games a season that are moved? What happens when temperatures begin to stay warmer later into the year? What happens when rain occurs more and more often? This rink could continue to become less utilizable as global warming continues to strike its rays down on the earth because there doesn’t seem to be a fix right now for the effects that humidity and air temperature have on this specific type of rink.

There are a couple of reasons that the conversation of a better solution has not been had, starting with the partnership between Albertus Magnus and the City of New Haven.

The Ralph Walker Skating Rink, an indoor-outdoor ice rink in New Haven, became the home of the Albertus Magnus Falcons in 2019 after being closed for about three years for renovations. Coming out of the rink’s rebirth, a partnership between the city of New Haven and Albertus Magnus College began.

A partnership that in short meant that the City of New Haven and Albertus Magnus would work together to offer youth hockey opportunities for the New Haven community as well as come together to renovate the Ralph Walker Skating Rink to make both the city programs and the Division III hockey games a possibility.

In a statement provided by Camille he said, “I continue to be grateful for the innovative collaboration and partnership between the City of New Haven and Albertus Magnus College as it relates to the Ralph Walker Skating Rink.  Dating back to my early interactions with then City of New Haven Mayor, Toni Harp, and continuing today with Mayor Justin Elicker we have a shared commitment and goal to increased opportunities for the city’s residents and, in particular, its youth for enhanced learn to skate and youth hockey programming made available through the renovated and improved Ralph Walker facility.”

When the Ralph Walker Skating Rink was renovated between 2016 and 2019, Albertus Magnus College gave $300,000 to the city for phase two of the enhancements, a $1.75 million phase, in order to help turn the Ralph Walker Skating Rink into the Albertus Magnus home ice by adding new amenities like new locker rooms to the facility.

One thing that interestingly wasn’t discussed in this renovation, was enclosing the rink to rectify the visibility and year-round usability issues. Fixing the problem of danger and visibility issues while players are skating at fast paces into one another to win a puck seems like it should be a priority but the priority instead looks to be keeping the rink in its indoor-outdoor format for uniqueness and historic purposes.

“It was built as an outdoor rink,” said Dixon. “I think because of the weather and climate and people loving to skate there, the roof was put there. "

"Basically being near the highway, all the debris that came off the highway, was dusted over the highway, came out to the ice. So, it sort of set the motions in play back in the '50's to put a roof on it, but it was never anything to put sides on the rink.”

The partnership discussed earlier would seemingly mean that Albertus Magnus could have a say in decisions regarding the rink and could bring up these visibility concerns, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Dixon said, “No, we're not putting sides on the side of our rink…the rink does not belong to Albertus Magnus, it belongs to the City of New Haven, New Haven Parks and Recreation. They are residents paying to use our rink as it is.”

Which as of now Albertus does, even though some feel enclosing the rink is necessary for the future.

Faherty said, “My very uninformed opinion is just maybe they have to close it. But if there's an alternative, if there's a viable alternative opinion that helps defog the place easier on those kinds of days, then I'm all for it.”

An alternative option to enclosing the rink seems to be the most wanted solution to this problem because enclosing the rink would remove its uniqueness and of course cost a lot of money.

People love to stand out and be different and right now that's what the Ralph Walker Skating Rink is and people don’t want to see that history disappear.

DeJonge said “I personally think it's kind of cool that it's not completely enclosed because it gives us like a different feel. A lot of rinks have very stuffy air because carbon dioxide is very common in the rinks which can make it hard to breathe if you're spending a lot of time in the rink. Especially when it's older but the fact that ours is partially open it's really nice because it's a lot easier for us to breathe it just can get stuffy when it's humid out.”

Faherty said “I think the concept is cool of having an indoor-outdoor, but those are the kind of things that happen with it.”

Camille said, “Ralph Walker is steeped in history, including its “open air” structure. I recall from my own childhood growing up in New Hampshire, playing hockey in a rink that also was open air—my toes still are frozen from that experience!”

As all things in this world are, the enclosing of the rink is dependent on the money available to complete such a large project, which isn’t readily there.

Dixon said, “If somebody gives us $3 million, $4 million, $5 million, $6 million to put sides on it, we'll consider it. But that's not the case right now. We don't have the money, neither does the state or Albertus Magnus.”

While Dixon spoke of the money issue, which is a huge problem, Camille addressed a hope for change in the future, “My dream for Ralph Walker is that someday resources will be available to fully enclose the facility, which not only would assure appropriate conditions for skating and hockey in the winter months, but I am sure would lead to growth in youth opportunities year-round.”

No attention to fixing the problem has been put into action yet seemingly due to the lack of funds and it not being an extreme issue as of late. There is the dream by some, including Camille, that the resources will be available one day to enclose the facility helping not only the Albertus Magnus ice hockey teams, but ensuring growth in the community programs Albertus provides as well. This shows that there may need to be a place for discussion in the near future about enclosing the Ralph Walker Skating Rink before it could be forced back to a lull much like in 2016 when it was almost closed down for good.