Co-op Place to convert between hockey, bull riding and curling four times in one month

Co-op Place in Medicine Hat will undergo a series of back-to-back arena conversions over the next month, cycling through ice hockey, professional bull riding and championship curling, with organizers expecting nearly 30,000 patrons through the doors, the City of Medicine Hat said Friday.

The sequence begins with a Medicine Hat Tigers game, after which the ice is protected under a temporary floor and crews from across Western Canada install the Professional Bull Riders arena. That includes chutes, pens, gates and broadcast areas, plus approximately 680,000 kilograms of dirt hauled in by more than 60 truckloads to form the riding surface.

Once the bull riding concludes, all that dirt must be removed, the livestock infrastructure dismantled and the venue cleaned before hockey returns. Dasher boards, glass, team benches and penalty boxes are reinstalled and the ice surface is inspected to meet WHL standards. The city said the PBR conversion and the return to hockey will require nearly 400 operational person-hours from venue operations, housekeeping and event support teams.

The most technically demanding conversion begins after the Tigers host the Calgary Hitmen on Oct. 24. Hockey ice must be rebuilt to meet championship curling specifications — flatter, thicker and more precisely finished than a standard skating surface. More than 10,000 additional litres of water will be applied in stages, frozen, measured and refined to produce four competition sheets for the Grand Slam of Curling Masters event.

Curling rings, hog lines, hacks, bumpers, scoreboards and broadcast equipment will then be installed, with repeated quality checks across all four sheets. The Grand Slam of Curling Masters is scheduled to run Nov. 3 to 8, a six-day event.

Tickets for all three events are available at tixx.ca.