Livonia — I’m in a park hidden from the prying eyes of “main street” Livonia. A private hideaway lit by floodlights and the rim of this playground is a suburban street lined with SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans. The rear windshields are all emblazoned with the names of youth hockey teams.
I’m huddled with a couple dozen dads, all decked out in heavy all-weather gear given that the windchill is below zero. It’s so cold the surrounding snow has crystalized beyond powder and has hardened. Two portable fire pits are blazing nearby. The only sound I hear is metal edges hitting ice. Why are we out here in the middle of the night?
Because we love hockey. These men build their kids a “Rink of Dreams.” It’s a remarkable open-air hockey rink, built by men with various technical skills and occupations, and smoothed by a makeshift Zamboni manufactured through trial and error inside a nearby garage.
Football can be played on any open field. A basketball can be dribbled on any paved surface. Kids can play catch with a baseball in any backyard. But outdoor hockey requires serious effort, time, and technical know-how, and passion for the sport.
That passion for hockey has grown here for over 50 years, from the frozen backyard rink all the way to the NHL.
Livonia hockey players have gone on to become pillars of the community. The City Council president is a former high school player and currently coaches multiple teams for the city. The principal of Livonia Stevenson High School was a former player for that program and a MHSHCA Hall of Fame inductee. The current coach for Livonia Stevenson was also once a Livonia player himself. The list of former Livonia high school players are now coaching youth hockey programs in the city is long.
Even several notable NHL players matriculated out of Livonia, including Calgary Flames forward David Moss, Vancouver Canucks forward Ryan Kesler, Los Angeles Kings forward Mike Donnelly, San Jose Shark forward Marc Beaufait, and two legendary players: All Star Toronto Maple Leaf’s defenseman Al Iafrate, known for his record-setting 105.2 mph slapshot, and Dallas Stars Hall of Fame forward Mike Modano, the highest scoring American-born player in NHL history.
As if that wasn’t enough evidence for Livonia’s credentials as hockey-obsessed city, the talk radio and podcast voice of hockey for the State of Michigan, Sean Baligian, honed his craft on the “Mean streets of L-town.”
These great players come from a tradition in which kids can find a frozen sheet of ice to play “shinny” and emulate their favorite players.
That tradition relies on the hockey dads who brave the wicked harsh elements of Michigan winters to make those frozen sheets safe and available. These are dedicated men, going the extra mile, in some cases hundreds of miles, to find, assemble, and construct these playing surfaces.
Tom Wilson, a Livonia resident, hockey coach, and one of the lead dads involved in building and maintaining the “Rink of Dreams” swore me to secrecy. “We keep this private. It’s for the kids. Do not give out the location of this honey pot.”
The rink is, in a word, breathtaking. Standing on the hill overlooking it, I caught myself whispering, “If you build it, they will come” as if the hockey gods themselves might descend and play on its ice surface.
Wilson’s humility was noble, considering the extraordinary accomplishment he and his buddies had pulled off. He was quick to point out the rink was decades in the making, and he had only maintained and added to its beauty. As a former Livonia hockey player myself, I knew about this sheet of ice in the 1980s. It was barely usable back then. Wilson and the other dads had done something utterly remarkable.
Adam Biek, one of several dads that helped Wilson build this hockey valhalla, impressed upon me the distance he traveled for such an endeavor. He crisscrossed the state of Michigan to find metal framing strong enough to withstand several thousand pounds of water weight, a plastic tarp large enough to cover the entire rink, and the components for assembling the Zamboni, which was hitched to an ATV and might put the building managers at Little Caesars Arena to shame.
I stood watching for several hours with Kenny Stark, a Livonia resident, hockey dad, and lifelong close friend. “Keeps them off their f***in’ phones,” he laughed.
I was watching the foundation of Livonia in real time. Dads, their sons and daughters, and the game of hockey. Some of these dads are men I grew up with, now with their own kids dangling a puck on a razor-thin edge. The work these dads have committed to will one day be turned over to a new generation.
Every generation moves on, but not every acorn falls far from the tree, and Livonia has an interesting generational culture. These young hockey players will find their place and their purpose. Maybe one of them will make the NHL. Very likely these kids will coach their own children’s teams.
Perhaps 30 years from now, one of these kids will be building this very rink with another group of dads: maintaining it, protecting it, and watching their own kids skate on it.
Livonia is many great things, but most notably it’s hockeytown.
J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
