Home ice advantage

Olivia Winslow finds them in the strangest places -- black rubber reminders of her family's ice escapades in the backyard and crisp winter nights filled with chili, hot chocolate, and skating on the rink behind their Newbury home.

"Once the snow is gone and I'm in my garden, I find pucks in amongst my peonies," Olivia Winslow said.

Weeding pucks out of the garden in the spring is a small price to pay for having a personal ice palace each winter, according to local families who have frozen over their lawns in search of a cure for cabin fever. Backyards across the region are transformed into rinks each winter, offering an early arena for young skaters and a built-in gathering place for friends and family.

While the National Hockey League canceled its season last week due to a labor dispute, backyard rinks across the region are still in business, offering an early arena for young skaters and a built-in gathering place for friends and family.

"It is what a swimming pool is to kids in the summertime," said Peter "Pip" Winslow, the proud designer and architect of his family's 100-by-50-foot rink. "Wintertime is tough and the kids are inside in a small home. They're chomping at the bit. You make something like that available to them and I don't care if they're a hockey player or not, they're going to use it."

In the increasingly competitive and expensive world of childhood sports, these rinks also offer aspiring hockey stars a free, easy way to get some unstructured ice time.

"I think you develop a lot of skills out there playing shinny hockey," said Bruins Hall of Fame defenseman Ray Bourque, who grew up playing the game outdoors in the Montreal-area and now lives in Topsfield. "You're just wheeling and dealing with your buddies and the competitiveness comes out and I think that aspect of it will make kids improve. You're just lacing them up and improving without even knowing it."

Pip Winslow, who has been creating the rink in his acre-plus backyard for 11 years, said his four children -- Emily, 16, Timothy, 14, Madeleine, 9, and Mason, 7 -- eschew television to spend time outdoors on the rink, where all of them learned to skate. The Winslows' rink has two regulation hockey nets for the three youngest, who are hockey players. Emily is a figure skater. Timothy, who plays hockey at the Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, has asked to bring his teammates over to try out the home ice.

It was three years ago that Kevin Horrigan of Wakefield first built a rink in the backyard of his childhood home, which he now owns. He was inspired by memories of learning to skate on a homemade rink at a nearby house, which is visible from his backyard. The surface he created served as the training ground for his 5-year-old daughter, Megan.

The rink has grown with Horrigan's family. It is now 80 by 36 feet, big enough for Megan to skate around one end and for his hockey-playing son, Colin, 9, to fire pucks into a net on the other.

It can also accommodate one of Megan's favorite ice skating games -- the family whip. The skating line spans generations and includes Horrigan, his wife, Sharon, their two children, and sometimes Horrigan's 64-year-old mother, Kaye.

"We have everything we need out here," said Sharon Horrigan. "And if there is anything else we need we just go inside and get it."

Brian Armand of Danvers remembers growing up in Salem and going out with friends to shovel a local pond so they could play hockey. Armand, 37, still plays hockey, competing in a local men's league. He said skating remains one of the most enjoyable things he does. He wanted his children, Justine, 8, and Trevor, 5, to derive the same joy from gliding along the ice.

"I want my kids to be able to skate whenever they want," said Armand. "And there is a challenge to creating a rink. There is a challenge with being able to come up with a nice clean sheet of ice."

Former Sports Illustrated hockey writer Jack Falla, author of the book "Home Ice: Reflections on Backyard Rinks and Frozen Ponds," said there are two main reasons that people build backyard rinks: to give their children a chance at stardom and to bring them closer to their families. Falla, who visited backyard rinks across North America for his book, said his family was the inspiration for the rink he built outside his Natick home, the Bacon Street Omni.

"Fundamentally, when you strip everything else away, the rink connects you with the people you love," said Falla. "That's why I built it."

Falla's two grandchildren now use the rink, uniting three generations of his family.

But the rinks do have practical applications. Having a backyard rink won't guarantee your son or daughter a spot in the National Hockey League or an Olympic medal stand, but it does guarantee them valuable ice time and an opportunity for on-ice improvisation. Pip Winslow and Kevin Horrigan are youth hockey coaches and said they notice a difference in players who are able to play outside the rigid structure of games and practices.

"It's tough to find a youth hockey organization that puts your kids on the ice four hours a week," said Winslow. "The kids in our neighborhood log 10 hours a weekend on the backyard rink. Ice time is ice time. They're getting better, having fun, and developing creative skills that are sometimes tough to develop in a structured organization."

Bourque said both of his hockey-playing sons, Ryan, 14, and 19-year-old Chris, who scored the winning goal for Boston University in the Beanpot, had the benefit of playing the game outdoors with friends.

Building a backyard rink isn't for everybody. It isn't as simple as just watering your lawn, letting it freeze, and skating. The rinks require constant care, snow removal, and an eye on the weather. Falla said a backyard rink owner spends more time watching the Weather Channel than ESPN.

Falla's rink, which has taken on reverential status in backyard rink circles, is the archetype for several backyard rinks, including Horrigan's. There is a chapter in Falla's book that details how to assemble a backyard rink, covering everything from picking the right plastic to serve as the foundation for the ice to the proper way to resurface. Some companies offer kits that are aimed at making the rink-building process less labor intensive.

"A backyard rink, it's work," said Pip Winslow. "But not a big expense. It's an investment in time. It's not the rich man that does it. It's kind of the fool that is going to commit himself to this big chunk of work over the winter."

While children enjoy skating on the rinks, it seems half the fun for backyard rink builders is maintaining and accessorizing them. The tinkering never ends.

Winslow installed floodlights in a sprawling sugar maple that extends over one end of the rink. Horrigan, who copied his side boards out of Falla's book, added a makeshift gate this year to make it easier for his children to step on the ice. Armand took advantage of the fact his home is undergoing a renovation and used a set of unwanted closet doors and leftover wooden roof trusses to fashion new side boards on his rink, which is 45 by 18 feet. The side boards contain the water.

"I'll come home and walk out just to look at it," said Armand. "I'll go check the ice before I even go in the house and put down my work bag and do anything else."

Falla said Armand is not alone. He said he has noticed an increased interest in backyard rinks in the last decade.

"In the last 10 years whatever the number was, it's five times what it was before," said Falla. He attributes the interest to a yearning for a simpler time when sports were less complicated and regimented.

But even as his backyard rink removes some of the structure from skating activities, Armand has plans to increase his skating structure. He has explained to his patient wife, Brenda, that like their home, the backyard rink is a work in progress.

"I've already told my wife, 'Next year we're going bigger,' " said Armand.