OUR CORE VALUES
llWe look back on our lives as hockey players, coaches and hockey parents and believe that it contributed greatly to who we are today - hockey helped shape our lives, our families and our kids.
Some of our best memories are:
A large part of Black Bear is giving the benefits of this great game to the communities that we serve. We believe that hockey teaches key aspects of a person's life including hard work, resilience, honesty, physical fitness and most of all, the value of being part of a team
Getting up at 5am for an early tourney game, skating hard at a practice when you are tired and you just want to be home, picking yourself up after a tough hit and getting back into the play, or navigating the locker room with a bunch of teenage boys - all of these shaped our lives or the lives of our kids. The ksssh, ksssh, ksssh sound of skates cutting through the ice that you hear at an early morning skate in an empty rink or the thwack of the puck smashing against the glass - unique sounds that become part of us. For many families, time together on the road, in the hotels and at the rinks will be some of the best time you have and will build bonds that will last forever. Even now, well past our playing careers, we wear the Bauer jackets of our individual teams with pride. We check myhockeyrankings.com each Wednesday morning when we wake up to see how our hundreds of teams did that week. We log onto HockeyTV whenever we can to follow our junior teams. Hockey is in our DNA. These are the core values of Black Bear.
Our customers are mainly under the age of 18, and we are dedicated to making them better citizens as well as better players. We are also focused on leaving the world a better place for them. Because of that, we are constantly working to make our facilities as sustainable as possible. For example,
There was one indoor hockey rink in the State of Maine where our Founder grew up. If you wanted to play, you had to get up at 4am and drive hours to the one rink (if it was open) or you played on the ponds. So, kids played on the ponds with whatever gear they could scrape together. Often, kids couldn't play because they couldn't afford skates or gloves. With that in mind, we don't want money to stop kids from playing. We believe in bringing the benefits of hockey to everyone including people from all backgrounds or economic means.
Some of our best memories are:
- Watching our young kids play knee hockey in the hallways of completely unmemorable hotels;
- Big group dinners with the parents and kids at a local Buffalo Wild Wings; or
- Late night beers in the lobby telling the same stories of our games over and over.
A large part of Black Bear is giving the benefits of this great game to the communities that we serve. We believe that hockey teaches key aspects of a person's life including hard work, resilience, honesty, physical fitness and most of all, the value of being part of a team
Getting up at 5am for an early tourney game, skating hard at a practice when you are tired and you just want to be home, picking yourself up after a tough hit and getting back into the play, or navigating the locker room with a bunch of teenage boys - all of these shaped our lives or the lives of our kids. The ksssh, ksssh, ksssh sound of skates cutting through the ice that you hear at an early morning skate in an empty rink or the thwack of the puck smashing against the glass - unique sounds that become part of us. For many families, time together on the road, in the hotels and at the rinks will be some of the best time you have and will build bonds that will last forever. Even now, well past our playing careers, we wear the Bauer jackets of our individual teams with pride. We check myhockeyrankings.com each Wednesday morning when we wake up to see how our hundreds of teams did that week. We log onto HockeyTV whenever we can to follow our junior teams. Hockey is in our DNA. These are the core values of Black Bear.
Our customers are mainly under the age of 18, and we are dedicated to making them better citizens as well as better players. We are also focused on leaving the world a better place for them. Because of that, we are constantly working to make our facilities as sustainable as possible. For example,
- Almost 20% of our rinks derive as much as 50% of their power from solar energy. We continue to install solar panels on our rinks and will look to achieve 50% penetration in our portfolio within 5 years.
- We don't build new rinks and take up a greater carbon footprint; we renovate older rinks and make them environmentally friendly.
- We install Low-emission energy efficient ceilings (50% of our rinks currently). Low-E ceilings reduce the radiant energy entering the building and therefore reduce the load on refrigeration equipment, reduce condensation on the rink structure and reduce our overall carbon footprint.
- We use LED lights in 70% of our rinks with a goal of 100% in five years. LED's are extremely energy efficient in that they waste very little energy in the form of infrared radiation and they emit light directionally which means far fewer losses from the need to redirect or reflect light.
There was one indoor hockey rink in the State of Maine where our Founder grew up. If you wanted to play, you had to get up at 4am and drive hours to the one rink (if it was open) or you played on the ponds. So, kids played on the ponds with whatever gear they could scrape together. Often, kids couldn't play because they couldn't afford skates or gloves. With that in mind, we don't want money to stop kids from playing. We believe in bringing the benefits of hockey to everyone including people from all backgrounds or economic means.
- We utilize the learn-to-play hockey initiation program (HIP) from the NHL wherever possible but have expanded this program to rinks unsupported by the NHL and have expanded it to multiple times per year at our expense in the NHL supported rinks. We provide free gear for approximately 1000 beginner hockey players each year.
- In 2020, we realized that we needed to do more. So, we established the Black Bear Youth Hockey Foundation which strives to lower the bar for families to afford youth hockey. As of the end of 2020, we have raised almost $200,000 and have donated over $150,000 to hockey players who play in our rinks as well as other rinks. We have supported players from the 12 clubs so far. Black Bear provides all the labor for the foundation at no cost as well as free overhead expenses.