The best way to play cottage hockey indoors is on an easy-to-build “crockey” rink. This all-ages game, a cross between crokinole and table hockey, is adaptable to different skill levels, and it’s surprisingly addictive.
1. The rink starts as a piece of G1S (good one side) plywood, cut to 16″ by 24″ (or whatever size you like). Measure 4″ in from each corner to mark and then cut the angled corners. Cut an octagonal frame—the rink boards—from 1⁄2″ quarter- round trim. Attach the trim with wood glue (plus a few brads if your players like to get physical).
2. Paint the game board with white gloss or semi-gloss latex paint for a smooth, slippery surface. There are different ways to paint the lines, depending on how
finicky you are. I applied painter’s tape to mask off both sides of the straight lines and painted the curves by hand. Not perfect, but it’s the cottage, after all. An option for straight lines is automotive pinstripe tape. For the curves, you could use a drawing program to create the creases and the face-off circle, and then print them out on sticker paper.
3. Next, drill three sets of 3/16″ holes 4″ apart and 1″ out from the boards. These holes are for the golf tees (a cheap, dollar store find) that hold thick rubber bands. Drill more holes for players (golf tees) on defence—six spaced along the red line and three on each blue line.
4. The pucks (six per player) are 1⁄4″ slices of 11⁄4″-dia. dowel. Plain slices, though, tend to fly up, so to lower their centre of gravity, I drilled partway into one circular end with a 1⁄2″ drill. Be very careful when cutting and drilling small pieces. I held each disk with Vise-grip pliers while I drilled, but a vise would also work. The little divot also makes it easier to hold onto the pucks as you’re shooting.
Game play is simple: shoot your pucks in turn, and any that stay in the crease score a goal. With each round, a player can bring another golf tee off the bench for defence, making the shots a little more challenging.
Customize your game any way you’d like. For example, give each team one defensive all-star—a tee beefed up with rubber plumbing washers—to block more shots. Or invent your own rules. At my cottage, a shot over the boards incurs a delay-of-game penalty; you lose a defensive tee until the other team scores. But there’s one rule that always applies: the more trash talk on the ice, the better.
This story originally appeared in our Sept/Oct ’23 issue.
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