Welcome to the
Sport Systems Unlimited / Athletica website.
Experience
When it comes to excellence in the business of hockey facilities, no other company comes close to the experience offered by the more than 100 employees of Sport Systems Unlimited / Athletica. Lead by hands-on, ‘skin-in-the-game’ ownership based in Waterloo Ontario and Minneapolis Minnesota, we offer our customers a range of innovative products for all types of sporting facilities, including ice hockey, inline hockey, indoor soccer, lacrosse, and much more.
With the 2009 merger of Sport Systems Unlimited Corp. and Premier Rinks Inc. (dba Athletica), classic bloodlines were joined, combining the market appeal and innovative product suite found in the Athletica products, dating back to the formation of CrystaPlex® in 1956, with the advanced manufacturing processes developed by Sport Systems Unlimited since its inception in 1996.
No company in the world builds more dasher board systems that we do, and nobody builds them better.
Products & Innovation
Introduced in 2011, our revolutionary Seamless Acrylic Shielding System has taken the hockey world by storm, with its one-of-a-kind impact absorbing design, utilizing industry-leading CrystaPlex® 590 Plus acrylic. Offering ease of conversions for arena operations, ultimate safety for players and superb sightlines for spectators, no other shielding system comes close to our Seamless Acrylic Shielding System.
Find out more: 
Seamless Acrylic.pdf
Installed in September, 2011 at HP Pavilion in San Jose, home of the NHL Sharks, Athletica's Seamless Acrylic Shielding System has won rave reviews from fans and Operations staff alike: " Bruce has done a fantastic job keeping everyone working together to achieve a great looking installation," commented Operations Manager Rich Sotelo. "Some of our season ticket holders have told me the seamless acrylic gives the appearance of opening up the ice, they love it! We look forward to a continuing partnership with Sport Systems."
We have lead the industry for years with cutting edge product developments designed to improve the safety of the players and make the operation of sports facilities simpler and easier.
Curved Acrylic Terminations
In 2011, two of the big issues addressed by the National Hockey League were:
- Replacing the single glass-termination post at players boxes with a curved acrylic panel attached to an ‘energy managing sleeve’
- Upgrading the padding on termination posts
Our Curved Acrylic Termination Assembly and our upgraded termination post padding are approved by the NHL, and have been installed by 22 of 30 NHL facilities. Installations of these important new player safety devices were completed in advance of the start of regulation play for the 2011-12 season.
You can check the News & Announcements section on the home page of our website to see any number of articles detailing the satisfaction of our NHL clientele in this regard.
For more, including some photographs of the curved acrylic termination assembly designed by Sport Systems / Athletica, click on this link: Curved Acrylic Info.pdf
Other Innovations from Athletica / Sport Systems Designed to Enhance Player Safety:
SoftCap® absorbs 96% more force than standard hard HDPE cap rail systems. Others have tried to imitate it and failed. No rink should be without it.
GlassFlex® and CheckFlex® allow the boards and shielding systems to flex upon impact, easing the strain on players bodies during and after collisions.
Power Plate™ glass actually decreases the likelihood of glass breakage, and in the event glass does break, it stays in one place, allowing for easier clean up, and vastly improved safety for spectators.
In 2012, and in the years to come, we will continue bringing innovations to ice, developing a range of products to complement our dasher board systems to fully answer the needs of the owners and operators of sports facilities, and advancing the design of dasher boards beyond expectations.
Reach
Athletica / Sport Systems Unlimited is the industry leader in the design, engineering, manufacture and installation of dasher board systems for indoor and outdoor ice and non-ice sports. We are represented around the globe by a network of sales representatives and distributors second to none anywhere. Our representatives are on the ground all over North America, in Russia, United Kingdom, Japan and Central Europe.
In Support of Sustainability
Did you know we are one of the leading suppliers of Low-Emissivity ceilings in North America? Installing a Low-E ceiling in your older arena can generate very significant savings in you operating costs by keeping heat out the rink, allowing your refrigeration system to work less and use less energy. Find out more about the value of Low-E ceilings by contacting our Low-E specialist, Bill Love today.
Did you know aluminum is durable, corrosion-resistant, incredibly versatile, and infinitely recyclable, making it the material of choice for green builders. To learn more about the sustainable benefits of using aluminum in construction, contact The Aluminum Association, see www.Aluminum.org.
Air Quality in Rinks and Arenas
A growing number of jurisdictions are starting to pay closer attention to the quality of the air in indoor rinks and arenas, with the knowledge that air quality affects every one of us who enters a rink, whether for an hour to play a game of hockey, or for a 10-hour shift on the job.
The State of Minnesota has taken a leadership role in this regard. The MN Department of Health has indoor air quality rules which require, among other criteria, weekly air quality testing and documention of the results, subject to random inspection.
As reported in a story aired February 10th, 2011, on NBC's Today Show, so far only Massachusetts and Rhode Island have joined Minnesota in having regulations regarding air quality in hockey rinks.
As long-time proponents of doing everything we possibly can to ensure the safety of the people who use and work in arenas, we applaud these initiatives.
We're also ready to be part of the solution. To find out more about current best practices, and the latest products and systems designed to wirelessly monitor air temperature, relative humidity, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide levels, contact us today. And watch this space for future news and announcements!
Safety Through Innovation
We take great pride in, and treat very seriously our relationships with those areas we serve with our dasher boards, our after market Arena Supplies and Services, and our expertise. And while we are pleased to be the NHL’s Preferred Rink Equipment Supplier for dasherboards, we know there is a much bigger audience to whom we need to be responsible, when it comes to delivering safety.
In Canada there are an estimated 3,500 community hockey rinks; there are about the same number in the United States. In Europe, especially in Russia, the move is now on to build more of these types of rinks at an accelerated pace over the coming decade. It is because of these rinks, for their owners and operators, and for the children, women and men who play the great game of hockey in them, that we continue to modernize and improve our dasher board design.
When we talk about Safety Through Innovation, we mean industry-leading safety options that can be built in to our dasher boards, such as SoftCap®, our impact absorbing cap rail system. SoftCap® is 96% more compressive than the standard High Density Polyethylene cap rail every other dasher board company in the world uses. Did you get that? SoftCap® is nearly twice as forgiving upon impact as standard cap rail. SoftCap® is the only safety cap rail system approved by the NHL, and is now used in half of all NHL rinks. SoftCap® is also approved and in use in rinks in the Kontinental Hockey League, NCAA Div.1 schools, and community rinks.
To us, Safety Through Innovation, means bringing to market products that don't have any equal, such as our patented GlassFlex® seamless shielding system, which uses shock-absorbing buffers attached to the channel in which the shielding rests, to help dampen player impact and thereby reduce the likelihood and potential severity of player injury due to impact with the boards and shielding.
When we say Safety Through Innovation, we are talking about critical advances such as Power Plate™, a lamination applied to the spectator side of hockey glass which makes the glass less likely to break, and in the event it does break, keeps broken glass in place until it can be safely removed by the rink operators. Power Plate™ protects players and spectators from the possibility of having hundreds of pounds – thousands of pieces – of broken glass land on them; very simply, improving safety for players and fans, while reducing risk and liability for facility owners.
So when you think about Safety Through Innovation, think about this: If you owned and operated a community rink where moms, dads and kids come every day to skate and play hockey; if you were responsible for facility safety at a National, Olympic or University ice hockey training facility; if you owned an professional hockey team, with your tens of millions of dollars invested in your players, wouldn’t you do the most you could to ensure your facility was as injury-adverse as possible?
Wouldn’t you, at the very least, want to know more about all the things you could do?
We’re always interested in knowing your thoughts about anything you see on our site.
Contact us at info@SportSystemsCorp.com
