Hockey lifer Turcotte in full glory in the renovated Glenview Community Ice Center
If there's a name that simply screams hockey, that name is Sylvain Turcotte.
Hockey director for the Glenview Park District since 1987, director of the Glenview Stars travel hockey program for the last 15 years, Turcotte has been immersed in the sport since his parents, Yvan and Micheline, enrolled him in a youth program near his native Montreal at 5 years old. Much of the time he skated on outdoor rinks.
Inducted into the Illinois Hockey Hall of Fame as a coach on Jan. 26, 2020, when they were kids Turcotte coached the likes of Olympian Megan Bozek and NHL players such as Craig Anderson, Christian Dvorak, Ryan Hartmann, Brett Lebda and Al Montoya, all at the Glenview Community Ice Center.
He also coached one of his own relatives, Alex Turcotte, selected by the Los Angeles Kings with the fifth overall pick of the 2019 NHL Entry Draft.
Turcotte coaches players at the AAA level and he coaches players at the Mite level.
Yet his favorites have always been the children in the Learn to Skate program.
"It's fun because you watch those kids, they can't stand up, and two months later they're striding, and the following year they're skating backward," said Turcotte, 58, a men's league winger (and no doubt a ringer) until he hung it up about a decade ago.
"It's so rewarding to work with those younger kids. It keeps my mind young. It makes me excited to come back to the rink every day."
Now that Phase 4 COVID mitigations have allowed hockey programs to resume, at a 50% capacity, he's even more excited to be patrolling the renovated Glenview Ice Center. It officially debuted in September and never closed, but shifting health guidelines often limited its offerings to private lessons.
"At least the kids are back on the ice with some kind of normalcy," Turcotte said.
"Kids and parents alike, the first time they came into the rink they were in awe. If you came to the old building and you come to this one it's hard to get your bearings from the way things were, because it's a totally different facility."
As in, "rinks."
A big part of the $30.1 million renovation stemming from a 2018 referendum is a second regulation-size rink, this one with seating for 550 people, plus six locker rooms. That joined the Ice Center's existing NHL rink and its Studio Rink, each of which also were renovated.
"It's two-and-a-half basically brand-new rinks," Turcotte said.
New dryland training facilities came online, and the renovation offers several new spaces including a great hall, a community room, the full-service North Branch on Ice restaurant and the Joe Donuts stand. A soft opening of the North Branch is planned for March 16; Joe Donuts has been open on weekends since Feb. 13.
At the Glenview Community Ice Center, bigger is better for skaters and programs.
"The Glenview Stars would spend more hours outside of our building than they did in our building because we didn't have the ice time for them," Turcotte said.
Adding a sheet of ice may even reinstate former programs, like men's hockey leagues that had been relegated to late-night hours and lost players because of that. Or the open-ice period Turcotte affectionately called "Rat Time," for "rink rat." He's one of those.
With the ease in COVID mitigations, Turcotte said the center currently hosts Learn to Skate classes, figure skating classes (the figure skating program is run by Candace Diaz), the in-house hockey league and the Stars travel program. He estimated the total number of skaters to be around 925.
Some of the youngsters are sons and daughters of players Turcotte coached a generation ago. Some older skaters, like retired defenseman and Glenview native Brian Fahey, now coach at the same Ice Center where they learned to skate.
"That whole circle of life is so rewarding," Turcotte said.
So is waking up each morning to come to a gangbusters new facility to teach kids his favorite sport. Or something even more special.
"I've always said, hockey's a passion. It's not a sport," Turcotte said.