Rockets ice should be better than ever

A sure sign that the hockey season is almost here.
The ice at Prospera Place officially goes in Friday and the smiles on the faces of hockey fans in anticipation of the Kelowna Rockets training camp beginning next week are evident.
Prospera Place General Manager Wayne Pansegrau is in charge of making sure the ice is one of the best in the entire WHL.
"We've given ourselves four to five days this year, so we have given ourselves a little more time. Normally we would do it in a three day span. We like to get it in a day before training camp so we can get a skate on it before the Rockets rookies get on it for training camp on the 25th."

"For the first two days we just use a hose. Once we have a base down and apply the white paint/water mixture, we seal that in with straight water and probably another eight floods of that. Then we add in our markings like our face-off dots, red line, blue line and then add our advertisements. We switched a couple of years ago to a textile logo which is a reusable fabric logo that we can lay into the ice. It saves us a lot of labour and it enables us to get some more detail to the actual ads."

Pansegrau says the ice at Prospera Place should be better than ever this season.

"It is tough to make good ice with bad water. We have gone to the trouble of installing a brand new reverse osmosis water system in our building this summer. The last couple of years we have been using tap water, which in Kelowna isn't the greatest. When it comes down to making ice our new system will give us a better product to use."

"At the end of the day we want to have the best quality for our main tenant. Like the Rockets who want to be the best team every year, we want to be the best ice crew every year."

Prospera staff have brought in Mike Craig, who's father is the head ice guy for the NHL to help bring in the ice this season.