The National Hockey League’s Commissioner revealed the winner of this year’s Kraft Hockeyville contest live on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday, April 5th.
Gary Bettman opened the envelope and his announcement that followed was that $250,000 in arena upgrades and the chance to host a NHL pre-season game in 2025 will be going to Saint-Boniface, Quebec.
The four finalists for this year were the Town of Crossfield, Alberta along with Honeywood, Ontario, and Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia plus Saint-Boniface.
Crossfield will still receive $25,000 for upgrades to the Pete Knight Memorial Arena, plus $10,000 in brand new hockey equipment to help more children play the game. Honeywood and Lower Sackville will also get similar consolation prizes.
Prior to the contest winner being unveiled, Crossfield Mayor Kim Harris had stated that if they were to be named Kraft Hockeyville the arena upgrade money would “go towards making our rink more accessible for people who are in wheel chairs, and that is really important to us and our community. The second thing that we hope to do is to be able to serve hot food in our concession. Right now we don’t have the ability to do that and we don’t have restaurants that are open later or earlier in the morning. It would be nice for when the families come visit us, and play hockey and skate in our rink that they have access to good, hot food.”
The Kraft Hockeyville program was launched 19 years ago and more than $5.1 million has been awarded to 101 communities since then. Elliot Lake, Ontario was last year’s winner.
