The goal of the manual is to help communities and hockey enthusiasts to build ice rinks in their neighborhoods, at reasonable costs. In order to show communities all over the planet that an ice rink is not one of the seventh wonders of the world, the IIHF decided to put a group of experts together to create a rink manual. The problems associated with building artificial ice rinks could be summarized in these two questions: Rinks with artificial ice can be built anywhere, even in the desert or south of the equator.

Only some ten years ago, ice hockey in some of the places mentioned above was a good joke. The reason, of course, is rinks with artificial ice. In the United States, there is high level ice hockey played in cities like Los Angeles, Tampa and Dallas. Some of the countries with hockey programs and leagues include the United Arab Emirates, Israel, South Africa, Australia and Singapore.

Today, the International Ice Hockey Federation has more than 70 national member federations. And those were the long seasons! This is why North America, Scandinavia, the former Soviet Union and a handful of other countries had an early jump in this game. It could only be played in places where you had natural ice from December until at the latest March. In the beginning, ice hockey had its definite limits. The rink is the key to all hockey development

Ice hockey and ice skating game