On the Hours: Planning Each Day at KCI

If this story reads as a love letter to Kraken Community Iceplex, there is no denying it. This place, five years young this week, has evolved into much more than the first public year-round refrigerated rinks inside the Seattle city limits in more than 40 years.

The fact that KCI features three rinks is nothing short of genius, allowing not just more access to youth and adult hockey, youth and adult figure skating and public skate sessions, but also a robust learn-to-skate program that teaches ice recreation on blades to upwards of 2,000 new skaters each year. The beginner classes funnel hundreds of participants, kids and adults, into figure skating pursuits and hockey league.

There’s more, way more: Such as a tots session each week allowing toddlers to take the ice with or without skates (and the optional seal skating aid).  This summer, Krista Leesment, KCI vice president of business operations, introduced a Friday evening “Lacrockey” session that drew loads of players happy to skate on a full-size rink carrying lacrosse sticks, baskets instead of blades, while replacing the puck with a lacrosse ball. The competition, whether adult or youth, was spirited, with more passing and movement each week as players transformed a novelty into an impressive patchwork of playmaking and solid defense.

Ever heard of synchronized skating? It’s slated to be on the event schedule at the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps. KCI is part of the elevated sport’s cutting edge, offering it to youth and adults on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. In a more traditional Olympic turn, the Iceplex has equally welcomed curling enthusiasts, new, seasoned and highly competitive alike, to the rinks in the Northgate neighborhood.

Iceplex, as in Complex (Rinks Planning)

The three rinks at KCI have opened up all sorts of opportunities for skaters and the community at large.

One day represents nearly 60 hours of ice time while a week tops 400 hours. There is one humongous catch to all this open ice: It adds up to more than 140,000 hours every calendar year. As it turns out, Jonathan Andrews has been at the ready to account for every single hour, Zamboni ice cuts included.

Andrews is KCI’s director of facility programming and guest services, a position he has helmed from Day 1 after a decade managing schedules at five local indoor soccer spaces. He was recommended to Leesment via a friend of Kraken Chief Operating Officer Rob Lampman. Everyone connected with KCI logistics and operations is forever grateful for Andrews’ calm demeanor juggling the needs of two professional hockey teams, robust youth and adult hockey programs, a nationally respected figure skating association, Learn-to-Skate and Learn-to-Play initiatives, public skates, special events, charitable activities and more.

All constituencies have a good case and good cause. That’s where and how Andrews handles the multitudes of people vying for ice time. He acknowledges the tall task.

“It's definitely a beast of a schedule for our building,” said Andrews, whose grandfather played NCAA Division I hockey for Colorado College and later served as official scorer for NHL teams in Atlanta. “It’s a combination of all of the different people who come together in this building, both internal and external. The plan factors in all of the ice cuts and how much time the Zamboni needs [typically 15 minutes]. One thing that helped when we first started is that we had only six youth hockey teams. Now we're at 42 teams that all need practice times. Our youth tournaments started modestly with maybe 15 to 20 teams, but it has become an average of 30 or 40 teams over a weekend [needing a range of 20 to 80 hours of ice time].”

Andrews noted a distinct and headache-avoiding silver lining: “The great thing about the KCI programming leadership team is we’re fully intact from when we started. It’s been rewarding to grow with everyone, with Marty [Hlinka] overseeing youth hockey and Chad [Goodwin] doing the same for the skating academy, plus Andy [Cole] with the adult league. We’ve built really strong relationships. We can openly talk over and understand everyone’s needs.”

The always chipper Andrews said youth hockey is “probably the most challenging of our main user groups” due to practice time needs and looking to slot into the hours of 4 to 8:30 p.m. on school nights.

There still remains give-and-take among groups, plus the accepted and embraced requirements of the Kraken team itself. Andrews anticipates changes to any given planned week or month are inevitable and part of the job.

“Marty and youth hockey provide a template, and I look to build around it,” said Andrews. “For Chad and his figure skating group, they almost always skate on Rink 3 until youth hockey starts, and then there are adult games at night [plus regularly scheduled daily public skates]. That’s our day-to-day. But lots of things and situations come into play. There are season ticket member events that come up. If the Kraken decide we need to extend until two or three o'clock for the team that day, we accommodate it.”

For the three-rink master schedule, Andrews puts together a fall-winter version plus one for spring and a third plan for summer. While fall-winter speaks volumes for an ice sports center, Andrews said summer is “always challenging in its own way.”

“We have the youth stuff throughout the day [with kids not in school], plus all of our normal skaters who come for drop-in hockey or public skates, whose times kind of get moved around. We have a lot of summer field trips [plus other one-off special events, such as the annual Army-Navy game, all coordinated by David Accardi, KCI events and community development manager]. During the fall and winter, normally the day is our quieter time, with significant ice time assigned to the two pro teams. Andy and adult hockey shake up times in the summer too. It’s always interesting, no matter what time of year. Every group of guests and users is so important to the heart of KCI.”

Welcome with a Smile, One and All

Adding to all this is KCI’s clear positioning as a hub of community interaction and activity.

Patrick Peterman, senior vice president of mixed-use for Simon Property Group, which provided the land used for the Iceplex as part of a broader re-envisioning of what was once Northgate Mall, said the venue has exceeded expectations for generating more foot traffic to the site.

“Five years in, we view the collaboration with the Seattle Kraken as a tremendous success,” Peterman said. “The Kraken Community Iceplex has become a marquee destination for Northgate, bringing visibility, energy and activity to the area while complementing the district’s broader transformation. The Iceplex has helped expand the reasons people visit Northgate beyond traditional retail, with hockey, skating, events and community programming creating activity throughout the year.”

The Iceplex lobby hums weekdays in and weekends out, whether its visitors are gabbing while awaiting coffee orders at the Starbucks community store, browsing the Kraken Team Store, dining at the popular and delicious 32 Bar & Grill or watching loved ones, big and small, from the stands or lining the rinkside glass.

Enter Patti Brinkley, guest services manager, and Caroline Knote, who is in charge of guest services on weekends. Brinkley started full-time when KCI opened in 2021 while Knote was a part-timer in October 2021 who was elevated to a full-time role in the summer of 2025. One of these two integral leaders are stationed at KCI’s main welcome desk between Rinks 2 and 3 pretty much every day of the calendar year, be it a wintry January afternoon at the height of the hockey season or an August summer day with temperatures pushing past 80

degrees. Both women exude kindness and, no exaggeration, love for every customer and visitor walking in the front doors. It’s a feeling replicated and amplified by their staff.

“I absolutely love my job,” said Brinkley, who was a competitive figure skater in her Chicago youth days and skating manager at Lynnwood Ice Center for eight years before enlivening KCI. “I come to work every day, just wanting to see people, talk to people, talk to my regulars. And seeing all of the skaters who were too short to see over the top of the counter when we opened. Over the five years, now I see them over the top of the counter. Those skaters are comfortable to come talk with us. They feel safe to let us know if they have a problem or if something's bothering them or need something. They know they can come to us. Their parents know that they can come to us. It is truly a family atmosphere that’s been created.”

For Knote, she is comfortable and clear that “every day is different.” She game-plans at the start of every shift.

“I start every morning taking a look at everything that's happening,” said Knote. “We switch so quickly from, say, figure skating over to youth hockey and then into a public skate. My job is to keep it all organized; communication is important. I am always talking with [our guest services staff and other KCI colleagues].”

Knote pointed out one example: “We'll look ahead to see if there's a lot of people signed up for a public skate. In the winter months, we often set up another sign-in table so pre-paid customers can get a quick check-in.”

Andrews praises the one-two combination of Brinkley and Knote for the esprit de corps of the guest services team and its positive, endearing and uplifting effect on the daily comings and goings of recreational skaters, parents, players, future figure skating stars, public skate regulars, hockey lifers, professionals, birthday party guests, you name it.

“Patti and Caroline both deal with so much all the time,” said Andrews. “They do an amazing job with all of our activities and events every day of the week. Everyone across our programming groups [youth hockey, adult hockey, figure skating, private events and more] puts in the work to make KCI such a special place.”