Building is booming at the Whitney Forum this offseason. City of Flin Flon workers are replacing much of the arena’s boards for the first time in years.
The rink last saw construction of this type and scale in the run-up to the 2001 RBC Cup, hosted by Flin Flon at the arena. Now, with the structure of the boards itself beginning to sag, construction crews are getting to work.
“All the boards had been installed about 20 years ago. We wanted to open them up as part of a PM (preventative maintenance) and make sure everything was still solid,” said Whitney Forum manager Les Taylor.
“We replaced a lot of rusted screws, fixed some cracked wood and added some extra support, then basically cribbed everything because over time, things sag - we put extra blocking in early.”
The cost of the project is high enough that the entirety of the Forum’s boards will not be replaced this offseason - only half. Taylor and workers on the project are optimistic that boards on the other side of the ice, near the arena’s dressing rooms, can be refurbished next year.
“This was such a massive undertaking. We only did half because we want to kind of assess how much the work cost,” said Taylor.
Aside from the new construction methods, fans will notice little change once the project is completed. The boards will feature the same yellow baseline as the previous boards and will feature several of the same panes of Plexiglas as the old boards. The dasher boards, Taylor said, will feature a new colour of material in an attempt to “modernize” the arena’s look. Old pieces of the boards may be repurposed for other projects around the rink, including as spare material.
The City of Flin Flon has pitched in to make the construction easier by purchasing a glass pane replacement machine that seals onto the pane and lifts each panel - the larger ones weigh hundreds of pounds, Taylor said - using hydraulics.
