EAGLE RIVER, Wis. – Eagle River takes pride in its community.
 
It’s the tight-knit townspeople who may have saved the Labatt Blue/USA Hockey Pond Hockey Championships from getting cancelled this year.
 
The third week in January it was discovered that the ice on Dollar Lake – the venue for the first nine pond hockey championships – wasn’t thick enough to safely get equipment out to prepare the area for the event.
 
“When we got the call that the lake is really unplayable and there’s nine inches of slush on top of the ice, it just wasn’t going to make sense,” said Ashley Bevan, USA Hockey’s senior director, adult hockey. “We toyed with, ‘What do we do? What can we do?’”
 
Plan B needed to be implemented. One problem: there’s never been a need for an alternative option, thus there wasn’t a Plan B.

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