Color of Hockey: Free ice time for Harlem youth during Lasker renovation

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog for the past nine years. Douglas joined NHL.com in March 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles Ice Hockey in Harlem practicing at Wollman Rink NYC in Central Park with its home rink under renovation.

Ice Hockey in Harlem is unable to play at Lasker Rink, its outdoor facility in the northern end of New York's Central Park, for the next two years because of a major renovation project.
But the venerable program is hardly homeless.
Some of its players head to the park's southern end twice a week to practice at the iconic Wollman Rink NYC. IHIH is provided free ice time there, thanks to an arrangement with the new partnership group that operates the facility, which includes the parent company of the New Jersey Devils.
"I think what's being done at Wollman Rink is unprecedented," IHIH program director Malik Garvin said. "It means that our families can still play hockey conveniently, that the sport is still accessible to the families who are first-year players and also to those who have been with the program for years and deserve to have the sport accessible via mass transit."
A newly-renovated Wollman Rink opened in November under the Wollman Park Partners, a joint venture that took over operations from the Trump Organization.
The partners include Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Devils and the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, fitness club operator Equinox and Related Companies, a real estate firm.

IHIH's presence at the rink is part of the partners' effort to make Wollman a more welcoming destination and where diversity and inclusion are more than buzzwords.
The partners also have forged partnerships with Figure Skating in Harlem, the YMCA, the Boys' Club of New York, Great Performances + Melba's Restaurant and Green City Force.
Wollman Park Partners committed to reinvesting profits from the rink to upgrade the facility and enhance on-site partnerships with the community as part of its five-year operating agreement with the city.
"Something that I'm keenly aware of is ice skating rinks aren't, by nature or default, the most inclusive places just because figure skating and ice hockey traditionally are not the most diverse sports in terms of who plays them and who see themselves reflected in the sport," said David Gould, the partners' chief diversity officer who also holds similar titles with the Devils and HBSE. "To have an organization like Ice Hockey in Harlem there and bringing their kids from Harlem down into the southern end of Central Park and having them enjoying and taking advantage of Wollman Rink, we want them to feel an ownership there and a sense of inclusion and that's a place for them. We want them to bring their families back when they're not doing skills and drills."
IHIH has called Lasker Rink home since the program was founded in 1987 by Dave Wilk, Todd Levy and former New York Rangers forward Pat Hickey. It's part of the NHL's Hockey Is For Everyone initiative which provides support and unique programming to more than 30 nonprofit youth hockey organizations across North America.

The program faced a challenge about what to do when Lasker closed this season as part of a $150 million renovation project in the north end of Central Park that's scheduled for completion in 2024.
Already working under constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, IHIH officials had to figure out where its participants would practice and play this season and how they would get there.
Wollman offered a perfect solution. On Wednesday and Thursday evenings, cones section off a part of the giant rink so IHIH beginner players can take part in skating and skills drills without pucks, Garvin said.
"Right now, we're waiting on foam dividers to come in to divide the ice in terms of skating drills (with pucks)," said Garvin, a former IHIH participant who went on to play NCAA Division III hockey at Western New England University. "But right now, we're doing a lot of skating, a lot of edge work."
More experienced IHIH participants are practicing and playing games at the City Ice Pavilion and at World Ice Arena, each in the borough of Queens, about a 45- to 60-minute commute from Harlem, depending on traffic.
Garvin said the Wollman arrangement helps ease the sting of IHIH paying about $21,000 to rent ice time at the Queens rinks this season and at least another $50,000 to bus its players to the facilities and games out of town.
But the expense and travel hassles are worth it, he said.
"It's money well spent because it gives the opportunity for our kids to be part of an ice hockey team in a program such as ours, which also offers enrichment programming," Garvin said. "The exposure outside the neighborhood is truly priceless."