An indoor regulation-size N.H.L. hockey rink will be up and running at Riverhead’s Stotzky Park by the fall, Troy Albert of the Peconic Hockey Foundation said last week, assuming the Town of Riverhead and the foundation sign off on a long-term lease agreement that the town attorney’s office is drawing up now.
“It could well become the hub of hockey on eastern Long Island,” said Albert, adding that “at the moment there’s no covered rink between Hauppauge and Montauk, a 70-mile span.” The foundation’s founder plans to move from Cranston, R.I., where it is stored at present, the rink’s 225-by-120-foot dome and its accouterments — an investment of more than $1 million — “within the next few weeks. . . . Our goal is that there will be ice by the fall.”
The dome enclosing a 200-by-85-foot rink, which the foundation, a nonprofit that’s been in existence since 2015, would manage, is to be placed “over an underutilized soccer area.” The long-term lease would be at no cost, said Albert, who hopes that annual operating expenses will be lightened somewhat through annual municipal contributions, as is the case with the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter and the Southampton Recreation Center known as S.Y.S.
Foundation-sponsored youth teams have been practicing and playing at the Southampton Ice Rink and the Buckskill Winter Club here in recent years. Buckskill’s uncovered N.H.L.-size rink was home to four Peconic Hockey Foundation Wildcat teams this winter. There are now seven teams under the foundation’s aegis: two under-8 teams, an under-10 team, which recently won a regional Squirt Division tournament in the Providence, R.I., area, two under-12 teams, an under-14 team, and an under-16 one.
When three of the foundation’s teams debuted at Buckskill in January, Chris Minardi, whose son, Cam, centers one of the under-10 lines, said, “The foundation has addressed a need that has gone unmet for basically forever.”
Presumably he and others involved in youth hockey here were happy to read in the June 21 Newsday about the foundation’s proposed rink plan for Riverhead.
“I’ve not seen one bad comment on social media,” said Albert. With a covered rink in Riverhead, the foundation would be able, he said, “to continue to grow the sport.”
Since this article was published, The Star received word that on Wednesday night, in her State of the Town address, Riverhead Supervisor Yvett Aguiar reported that the town is “working with the Peconic Ice Hockey Foundation to create a memorandum of agreement to move this prospect forward. Once we reach an agreement, we anticipate ice hockey here in Riverhead late this summer.”