The spiral continues

There is a debate broiling in the City of Ottawa over ice time at indoor rinks.  The debate is not new... in fact it has been around for years.  On one side are the kids who want to play hockey and, since they go to bed at 9 PM, they want to play in the prime time period 4-9 PM on weekdays.  On the other hand there is every other group who also plays hockey.  I want to focus on Old-timers.

Old-timers are defined, generally, as players over 50.  I played with an Old-timers team that toured Australia a bunch of years ago, and the average age was 62.  These are old folks.  Not the ones sent to the homes by their loving families but the ones the families calls colourful.


Old-timers pay full rate for ice time in prime time.  Kids do not.  The city's solution to the problem of not enough ice rinks is to raise the cost of the prime ice time to the seniors to encourage them to move to non-prime time, defined, apparently, as every second Tuesday when the moon is in full view of the tower at the airport.

See the problem being created here?  If you drive full rate clients out of prime time in favour of those clients who do not pay full rate, you lose revenue.  When you lose revenue you have to raise rates.  When you raise rates you are no better off than when you started because the rug rats can't afford the higher rates and the old-timers on fixed incomes are playing at 4 AM for the same price that they used to pay for prime time.

The proposed solution is no solution at all.  It is a problem.  The real solution is more ice space.