Guides
- How to allocate practice ice fairly: Seven steps from an ice contract to team schedules, with the sample association allocated and a month with less ice shared across the full ice teams.
- Ice allocation policy template: The ten sections an association's ice allocation policy needs, the decisions in each, and the sample's division settings as an example table.
- Shared ice and half ice rules: Who may share half and third ice, how a shared hour counts toward targets, and one season counted both ways.
- Prime time ice fairness: Defining prime, early and late slots, measuring each team's share, and the sample allocated with and without evening them out.
- Ice scheduler checklist for the season: Before the allocation meeting, building and publishing the schedule, the weekly routine and the January re-allocation, with the sample's supply against demand.
- Ice scheduling software compared: Calendars, game schedulers and generators for minor hockey ice, with prices read on a stated date and what each does with a practice allocation.
Hard rules, never broken silently
A hard rule is one the allocator keeps on every slot it gives out. Any rule it cannot keep is named with the reason: a lock that breaks one is left out and listed, and a hand move that breaks one is flagged on the calendar.
- Ice size: full ice takes one team, half ice two, third ice three, and only divisions that use that size.
- Sharing: only teams the pairing rule allows (same division, same division and tier, or any) share a slot.
- Each division's earliest start and latest end, and its cap on late slots per week.
- Each team's blackout dates.
- One practice a day, if the association says so, and the minimum gap between a team's practices.
- Teams that share a coach are never on the ice at once, with 30 minutes of travel between arenas by default.
- Locks: a booking you lock stays where it is through every rebalance.
What it balances
Within the hard rules, the allocator scores each allocation and keeps the best one it finds. A team's shortfall is measured as a share of its own target and squared: one team missing its whole target costs 1050 points, one missing half costs 275, and two teams each missing a quarter cost 150 between them, so shortages are spread in proportion to targets. With spare ice left unused, each hour over a target costs 40 points. Prime time share and early and late slots are evened out within each division, a practice away from a team's preferred arena costs 6, and in a rebalance each booking a team loses costs 30, so a rebalance moves as little as it can.
The search is deterministic: the same season and seed always give the same allocation. It runs between 60,000 and 400,000 steps in a background worker, depending on the size of the season, then fills any slot a team below its target can still take.
Why a team is short
For every team below its target, the allocator counts the slots it did not get, by the first reason that stops it:
- Outside the division's hours
- Ice size the division does not use
- Blackout date
- Shared with a team it may not pair with
- Already full with other teams
- Overlaps another practice
- Already on the ice that day
- Too close to another practice
- A team sharing its coach is on the ice
- Late slot cap reached
- No division set
Straight after an allocation it never lists a free slot the team could take: any such slot is given to the team before the reasons are worked out. After hand moves, a free slot a team could take is listed as such.