'It's been too long': Kugluktuk's ice rink now open for action

Hockey season came a bit later than usual in Kugluktuk, Nunavut, but the opening of the community ice rink was still met with enthusiasm on Friday.

"I can't wait to play. It's been too long," said Liam Mulgrew, who plays in the community's senior men's hockey league.

The surface ice melted in December while crews were working on it. The community's recreation manager says it was due to the warmer weather that month — which reached single digits — and that caused puddles to form on the ice.

Mulgrew recalls seeing those puddles. 

"I was kinda nervous [hockey season] wouldn't start," said Mulgrew from the rink, Friday. "I'm looking forward to tonight's game."

"Despite living in the Arctic, it can be a little tricky to get ice going," said Matt Craddock, recreation manager for the hamlet, who's responsible for getting the rink up and running every year. 

Craddock said the community doesn't have an ice plant, so it has to wait for the weather to do its part and the staff makes ice by hand. 

"If it weren't for the staff I have ... putting in a lot of blood, sweat and tears into making the ice, we wouldn't even have it now."

New hockey season met with new team names

This year's hockey season comes with new jerseys and new names for some teams.

One of them is called the the Mainlanders, with a logo of a bluenose east caribou.

"It's about how our bluenose caribou are decreasing and we just want to represent that," said Mulgrew.

The other team name — Akhat — means grizzly bear in Inuinnaqtun. Fittingly, that team's logo is of a grizzly bear's head.

"It's a big, powerful animal and we've got to respect that."

On Friday night, a big crowd gathered for the community's first men's hockey game of the season.