Sharpening his skill

Ben Kovic has a passion for arenas. It’s obvious to anyone walking by the small room at the end of the hall in Iqaluit’s Arctic Winter Games Arena where Kovic sharpens skates. Chair of the territory’s wildlife management board by day, by night Kovic transforms into, well, a rink rat.

It’s Saturday morning and Kovic has just finished sharpening the blades of his 13-year-old son Brian. Still wearing a Nunavut Wildlife Management Board baseball cap, he smiles as parents and hockey kids stream by the room’s open window.

“I like the people,” he says, trying to explain why he spends most of his free time near the ice. “People you meet in arenas are always friendly and they’re hockey families, or hockey moms and dads.” Kovic, too, is a hockey dad. His daughter and two of his sons will be playing hockey during the Arctic Winter Games in March.

Kovic was awarded the skate-sharpening contract for the city in October, and since he has a monopoly, he may be spending more time sequestered in his small sharpening room than rink side. He expects to be sharpening for about 50 hours during the week of the games, and his eldest son has been trained to use an older piece of equipment at the city’s older skating venue. But, Kovic says, if he’s in the arena, he’s happy.

“I think it’s the atmosphere,” he says, readjusting his cap and smiling slightly. “The roughness of it. The odour — muscular odour — whatever it is, the arena is so different from any facility. You know, you go to a community hall it’s like going into hospital. But the arena is a rugged, beautiful place. I guess it’s almost like creating an artwork out of a boulder — something like that.”

Kovic left his Coral Harbour home at age 13 to go to school in Churchill, Man. It was there he discovered hockey and the allure of the rink.

He played hockey for a while, and then went on to coach, returning to Nunavut in 1969. His kids’ interest in the sport gave him an opportunity to throw himself into it again. Apart from knowing how to put a gleam on the blades, he has a Level 2 coaching accreditation and a trainers’ certificate

As he waits for customers, Kovic ponders the new arena of which he’s now a part. The smell isn’t quite right yet, he says.

“It’ll get there after the AWG. Right now there’s so much rubber on the floors, all you can smell is rubber,” he says. “But it’s well laid out and I think it’s a comfortable place for athletes to be in. It’s bright, compared to the old one, but I think we’re still going to miss the old arena.”

Kovic hopes the city will keep all the equipment from the old arena after it closes in April because, he says, the city is growing rapidly and will eventually need another venue for sporting events.

Two teenaged girls emerge from the dressing room in full hockey gear. They pause and speak with him in Inuktitut, asking how much it will cost to get their skates sharpened.

“Five bucks,” Kovic says. The two sharpening machines in the little room are worth about $10,000. They were supplied by the city, but Kovic has to rent the space in the arena from the recreation department.

The girls discuss whether to have the procedure done before or after they hit the ice.

“You do it before, you’ll perform better,” Kovic says. “It takes only a couple of minutes to do a pair.”

One of the girls takes off a hockey skate adorned with a heart sticker and places it on the counter for Kovic to inspect.

He has a flat-edged instrument that lies across the blade to show if the edge is level. “They’re a little crooked. But not bad,” he says. He picks up one of his son’s skates from the floor beside him and shows the girl.

“That’s how shiny they’re supposed to be. These are rough,” he says, gesturing to her skate, “So you’re going to skate slower, you’ll get tired easier.”

The girl gives Kovic a go-ahead nod. He places the skate, blade up, into a large machine that resembles a circular saw and flicks the on switch. The machine is connected to an industrial-style vacuum, which noisily sucks up metal particles.

After fussing with some settings, Kovic lifts the arm on the machine and gently places the grinding surface down on the skate blade. Sparks fly as he pulls the arm toward him, flattening the top of the blade as he goes. A couple of passes later and he pauses to balance a piece of metal across the blade. It’s level.

To put a finishing shine on the blade, he slides the sponge end of a bottle across it and wipes it off. He slides his fingernail on the edge of the blade and a tiny bit is razored off — the perfect sharpness.