Wednesday, Aug. 19 at 7 pm, the puck, er, rather the ball will be dropped to start the 2020 edition of the 11 Day Power Play Community Shift, dubbed the Big Save. Instead of ice hockey, this year’s event originally slated to run from July 8-19, has evolved into an outside street hockey game held at Buffalo RiverWorks in downtown Buffalo. It will go through Aug. 30.
With laws and logistics making the event impossible to play, the 11 Day Power Play is taking it to the street. The street hockey game will be played on an outdoor rink that’s shaded, so the sun won’t be blazing down on the players. And instead of the usual three hour shifts, they’ll be cut in half.
“We knew that playing street hockey would be quite difficult for three hours, so we reduced the shifts to 90 minutes,” said Lesakowski. “Each pair of teams will come in for a two-hour block of time. They’ll register and then play their shift. Then once they vacate the rink, the common areas will be disinfected before the next pair of teams take over.”