April 4, 2007

Not your childhood rink

By Marcel VanderWier
mvande54@uwo.ca

In London, Dave Gagner is a hockey fan's hockey man.

Since he first laced up his skates in the Chatham minor hockey system, all the way to his brief stint with the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1996, even to his current work as an assistant coach with the London Knights, Gagner has been wowing local hockey fans since he was a 16-year-old prodigy.

Even after retiring from the NHL in 1999 after amassing 719 points in 946 games, hockey, it seems, still means everything to the former all-star. He still daydreams about the sport - on top of his coaching duties and home life and part-time studies in business at the University of Western Ontario.

Gagner is the director of Custom Ice Inc., a company he founded seven years ago in Burlington, Ont. His company offers refrigerated backyard rinks that are guaranteed to remain frozen from October to March, in temperatures as high as 12 C. Today, as Canadian winters become greener and seasonal temperatures continue to rise, his business has now got the hockey fan's attention. Well, at least the attention of the wealthy ones, since a typical rink costs about $45,000.

Photo by Marcel VanderWier

Jodi Kershaw has been with Custom Ice Inc. since March 2000.

"Mother Nature has really helped us in the last three years," said sales representative Jodi Kershaw, one of Custom Ice's original employees.

Back in March 2000, Gagner teamed up with engineer Brendan Lenko to found Custom Ice. When he hung up his Vancouver Canucks' jersey for the last time in 1999, Gagner moved back to Oakville and decided to build himself a refrigerated rink.

He had played on these types of rinks in Europe during the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and never forgot the experience. "It was the coolest thing I'd ever done," he said. "It was hockey at its grassroots. And I just thought - it'd be so cool for my kids to have that."

So he hired Lenko to help him design the rink of his dreams. The two talked extensively while experimenting on Gagner's rink just off Lakeshore Road. "I really didn't think initially that it would turn into a business," Gagner remembered. But after five or six people stopped to gawk while the two were still building, wondering if they could have exactly the same thing, his mind began racing.

"Most people I told when I first talked about doing a rink in my backyard thought I was a little eccentric, nuts, whatever you want to call it, for doing refrigeration," he said. "But I know what the weather is like here. You can't rely on it. And it's a lot of work trying to get that rink back up and going after a thaw."

"We knew it wasn't going to be an item that was high volume, but we knew there would be interest," he said.

Seven years later, he has no regrets. "It's been a pretty successful venture for us."

"We've made a profit every year," Kershaw explained. "And we've increased those profits every year. That's how we define success." Operating the seasonal business year-round is also an accomplishment, she said.

When Gagner founded the company, it began with just five employees. Today, 25 people are on staff, with five to 15 more in the fall.

Photo courtesy of Custom Ice Inc.

One of the company's "strangest" projects was this 2004 seasonal feature - complete with pond and river - for the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nev.

The secret to these rinks is two-fold, says Gagner. First, Custom Ice uses a rollout plastic

piping system, which allows for increased portability and summer storage. Second, they are the only company that manufactures ice rink chillers to use single-phase electric power - the power you get from your average electrical outlet. Other companies can also build backyard rinks, said Gagner, but only with heavier, three-phase industrial power. According to Kershaw, Custom Ice rinks will cost you about 25 cents per square foot in hydro over the course of a five-month season.

After that, the northern sky is the limit as to how unique each rink can be. The company also supplies boards, glass, nets, lights, painted lines, and other accessories. They even designed a RinkRover - a modified John Deere lawn tractor that doubles as a miniature Zamboni.

"Custom Ice can build any rink, anywhere," said Kershaw. "We want to give our customers exactly what they envision. We've had requests for the strangest things." Not only does the company build backyard rinks, they also specialize in smaller training rinks and portable curling rinks.

Customers submit a topographic sketch of where they want their rink to go and level the site's ground, before Custom Ice does the rest. The rink is designed using computer technology before a crew is sent to build everything up to one metre outside of the rink area.

Six crews - each consisting of two to six people - work full time during the busy season of August to January. During this time, it takes them eight to 12 weeks to install each rink. In spring and summer, that time is cut in half. They also have a small service department that does setups or takedowns, as customers often store their rink in the garage over the summer.

Photo courtesy of Custom Ice Inc.

This backyard rink in Long Island, N.Y., is home to Pat LaFontaine.

Custom Ice has built rinks for the likes of Wendel Clark, Curtis Joseph and Pat LaFontaine. They were also responsible for constructing the curling rinks on set for Paul Gross' 2002 movie, Men With Brooms. The company recently finished a $2-million rink in King City, Ont.

Gagner acknowledges their products are geared to the wealthy. For a while, his target market was his NHL contacts and that network of people. He hopes to develop a cheaper product that will add to sales volume. Currently, a basic rink about 185 square metres in area costs approximately $45,000.

He says he doesn't understand why his least costly models haven't been more popular, however. People will spend that on a pool and they don't use it as much, he said. "We think we're the pool industry of 35 years ago. If we could come up with a model under $20,000…"

Custom Ice's rinks can be found all over the world - in the mountains of California, in Florida, and now, even Nunavut. "We have sold ice to Eskimos," said Kershaw, as uncommon temperatures have begun to affect even Baffin Island and rink construction has begun in Iqaluit.

"I think (refrigeration) is necessary now. You might not be able to skate in the day because of the sun, but at night you could skate all the time," Gagner says.

"In Canada, why not? For my kids, it was the best thing we ever did. My son was so mad at me when we sold the house (in Oakville). He was literally on it 30 hours a week. He and his friends still talk about it. It just enhanced his love for the game."

"To me, that's what it means to grow up in Canada."