Turning Outdoor Hockey Dreams To Reality 

Andy Cole just needs to look up during a game to know he made the right call creating an outdoor hockey tournament in Winthrop.

The director of the Kraken Hockey League adult circuit had been vacationing more than a decade ago with his family in the Okanagan County town of just under 600, known for its Old West downtown architecture and mountainous backdrop, and thought it would be a great setting to stage games. Hence, the Great Puckaroo Roundup tournament was born, now holding adult games thrice yearly for teams and players of all skill levels from across the state.

“In Winthrop, there’s eagles flying overhead,” Cole told Brianna Vasquez, producer of the weekly Kraken Home Ice show on King 5 TV. “There’s deer walking by. So, there’s all these cool things that would just never happen in an indoor rink.”

And never happens anyplace else in Washington, as the municipally-owned non-profit rink is the only uncovered outdoor one with a built-in refrigeration unit in the entire state. The refrigeration mechanics were something Cole, a Connecticut native who has spent 15 years organizing hockey tournaments in and around Seattle, insisted upon given Washington’s milder winters make it difficult to rely upon weather alone to keep ice frozen and cool.

To get the town to invest in the costly infrastructure, Cole signed a five-year deal guaranteeing he’d organize multiple hockey tournaments there annually.

“Once they said ‘Hey, we’re going to try to get this thing refrigerated’ I went ‘Then we can do it.’ Because you just don’t want to go all the way out there and have it canceled.”

But it didn’t always run smoothly. Cole’s very first attempt at a tournament was aborted in 2015 because the refrigeration system they initially bought didn’t work and the ice turned to slush.

“I’d scheduled the tournament, people had booked rooms and come out and it didn’t work,” he said. “So, that was rough. There have definitely been some trials and tribulations over the years.”

Things were working by 2016 when the first Puckaroo was held. Additional youth and collegiate tournaments staged by others have taken place as well alongside the Puckaroo events. Kraken Hockey League squads get priority in registering for the limited 14-team Puckaroo tournaments, though Cole tries to have at least one Winthrop-area club and sometimes additional invitees from elsewhere.

The refrigeration unit means games take place rain or shine and sometimes – given the town’s location in the foothills of the North Cascades – plenty of snow.

“Everybody comes home with a great story,” Cole said. “Whatever the weather does, it’s never a problem because it’s just sort of fun.”

During one of the three yearly tournaments early last month, the game had to be halted midway through so players could shovel snow off the ice.

“Right before we decided to shovel the snow, there was so much snow on the ice that you could hardly see the puck,” Cole said.

But for Tyler Zetting, a former Kraken emergency backup goalie who works as a senior accounting director with the team and has played in the tournament for two years, dealing with the weather adds to Puckaroo’s allure.

“It’s how hockey was meant to be played and you just feel that,” Zetting told King 5. “You have the cold air. You have the snow dusting down, and the sun shining through the trees. And it's just unlike playing inside an actual rink.”

Zetting said memories of the tournament are “frozen” in his mind.

“You’re just playing the game you love in this environment,” he told the King 5 program.

Tournaments typically take place on weekends in late November and at the beginning of January and February according to skill level. Entrants are accepted based on skills, league level, past play, and other factors and all teams are guaranteed three games and either a championship or consolation final appearance.

Cole still can’t believe his instincts about the setting have led to an event now going on a decade-plus.

“I was going to Winthrop with my family for my little kids to play in the snow and saw the rink there,” Cole told King 5. “And I thought immediately that this would be a great place for a tournament.”

But while he’s met “so many people over the years” trying to build similar outdoor rinks statewide, he adds that they often don’t anticipate the costs involved.

“Everybody’s trying to sort of copy this model,” he said. “But what they don’t understand is it’s tons of money. And you’re not really going to make it back.”

Cole said the tournaments do help lure additional tourism to Winthrop, which relied heavily on donated land and government grants for the project. The current refrigeration system was also bought second hand and now needs replacing with a new one for even more money.

But Cole said it is getting done, largely because the outdoor games have become so interwoven with the town’s winter identity.

“It’s just a perfect spot to have it,” he said. “When I first saw it I thought it would just be so ideal to be able to play a tournament outdoors. And we’re still doing it.”