Oulu (Finland) (AFP) - Snowflakes dance in the massive spotlights at a public ice hockey rink in the Finnish city of Oulu, against the echoing sound of pucks bouncing during a precious practice session for a local youth team.
Less than 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the Arctic Circle, the dozen young players are training outdoors in freezing temperatures rather than in their own arena -- which they can no longer afford to run.
Ice hockey is the top sport in Finland, the reigning world champion.There are around 30,000 children registered in ice hockey teams, while many more play casually with friends or at school.
But due to sky-rocketing energy prices this winter -- on the back of Russia's war in Ukraine -- many local teams are now struggling.
After rising costs made it too expensive to open their home arena, one of Oulu's local teams -- named Ahmat, which means The Wolverines in Finnish -- has been forced to hold practices at outdoor public rinks this season.
"The price increase has been so horrible that the company has not been able to open the arena at those prices," Marko Paananen, head coach at Ahmat, told AFP.
Many other arenas are facing the same fate in the Nordic country if the prices stay high.
The average cost of electricity in the third quarter was 40 to 60 percent higher than last year, according to Finland's national statistics office.
Number of players dropping
Outdoor rinks like the one in the Oulu suburb of Pateniemi -- a football field frozen into a hockey rink in winter -- are popular places for friends and family to come to skate.
For the young Ahmat players, the most important thing is to get practice time on the ice during the key winter training season.
With around four hundred players, most of whom are young, Ahmat is considered a small club -- but it boasts multiple former players who went on to become world champions and Olympic medallists.
Parents and coaches are worried about the consequences if the situation continues.
"Even though it's not that warm in our home arena, it's another thing to be at the mercy of the weather out here," said Katja Koistinen, mother of one of the players.
Without their own rink, Ahmat has to make do with outdoor rinks and sharing ice time with other teams.
"If you have training sessions here and there, you don't know how many of the guys will show up," 19-year-old coach Herman Hietajarvi told AFP.
Some other teams have allowed them to practise in their arenas, but that means uncertain practice hours and longer distances to travel.
"The number of players is dropping quite a lot at the moment," said head coach Paananen.
"We can't get new players to join when our own rink is not open."
Difficult season
After electricity imports from Russia were halted following the war in Ukraine, Finland launched an energy-saving campaign in October for the first time since the 1970s oil crisis.
"This season is going to be quite difficult, and especially in the new year costs may rise in many places," Jukka Toivakka of the Finnish Ice Hockey Association said.
The key training time is during the colder winter months -- most youth players do not practise during the summer -- and the association is urging arenas to be energy-efficient and municipalities to keep costs reasonable.
"We have appealed to municipalities and ice rink owners not to sacrifice youth sports to this momentary impact of energy price increases."
