After finally shoring up all the legal mumbo jumbo, the NHL Practice Facility slated to be built in Downtown Summerlin East of Pavilion Center Drive and South of Griffith Peak Drive will break ground officially on October 5th.

There will be a ceremony, open to the public, at 1:30 PM and will be attended by The Creator, practice facility guru Murray Craven, Steve Sisolak and Susan Brager from Clark County, and Kevin Orrock from the Howard Hughes Corp.

If you decide to head out there next Wednesday, you can expect a few speeches, a nice little shovel in the ground photo op (my favorite), and some very generic speeches about the importance of the facility to the community. It’s gonna be electric.

Nonetheless, it’s great to see construction of this thing finally getting underway. Craven mentioned earlier that the process is expected to take about 42 weeks, which would put the estimated completion date in late July to early August. That would give them plenty of time to be ready for training camp next season.

This is of course, if there are no debilitating hiccups in the next 10 months. The facility is set to have two sheets of ice, offices for the entire staff, and a restaurant which will be open to the public. Knowing how The Creator does things, it’s going to be the best practice facility in the NHL the moment it opens, there’s no doubt about that.

So, we’ll see ya on October 5th, bring your shovels. (Don’t really bring shovels, you’ll look weird.)

The dirt plot next to Downtown Summerlin is officially on it’s way to becoming a the new practice facility for the Las Vegas NHL franchise. Kinda.

At this moment the only thing that can be done is to move dirt, but hey, you’ve gotta start some where. Actual construction is still a few weeks away and a true groundbreaking ceremony is expected to be sometime in the next month or so.

As for what the facility will look like, we’ll still have to wait on that. (Those renderings floating around are maybe just a bit too similar to another place.)

Quite possibly the coolest part of the new building is the plan to have one of The Creator’s signature restaurants on the second floor overlooking the two sheets of ice down below. The menu at MacKenzie River Pizza looks delicious. I can already envision myself with some Buffalo Mack n’ Cheese and a Branding Iron pizza kicking back watching some hockey. Please give me free food. 

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