Newmarket Hurricanes
Rink: Ray Twinney Recreation Complex
Capacity: 3,700
Built: 1985
League: OJHL
City: Newmarket, Ontario
Home Of: Newmarket Hurricanes
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: December 20, 2025 vs Lindsay
Unique Arena: #118
OJHL Arena: #2
The Ray Twinney Recreation Complex is located on the western side of Newmarket surrounded by parking lots, sports fields and a quiet residential neighbourhood. The rink, which opened in 1985, is named after a former mayor of the city and was originally done up in a hideous mustard yellow siding, has thankfully been redone in a more pleasing sky blue colour. Soon after the arena opened the Toronto Maple Leafs moved their AHL affiliate from St. Catharines to Newmarket and the AHL’s Saints played out of Ray Twinney from 1986 to 1991 before moving to St. John’s, Newfoundland where they found much greater success. After the AHL left, the OHL soon followed as the very successful Cornwall Royals moved in during the summer of 1992. The Royals played here for two seasons. The first was fairly competitive but the second was a total disaster as the team went winless on the road and finished in last place. The team didn’t do so well at the gate either, and in 1994 they moved to Sarnia to become the Sting where they remain today.
Upon entering the building’s main entrance, you spill into a large lobby with ticket booths, trophy cases and a couple corridors leading to the rest of the complex areas including a swimming pool. A set of doors leads you to a small, somewhat narrow concourse that is at ice level under the seating bowl. This concourse can be used to go around the entire rink. There is an impressive collection of framed photos of all the Jr A Hurricanes alumni from over the years that have moved on to higher levels of hockey. There is one snack bar at one end of the rink while the opposite end has a lounge/hall area. All the dressing rooms and bathrooms are accessed at this level, and there is also another entrance to the building on the back side. Eventually you find one of the openings to the seating bowl and find yourself in a standing room/moat area between the seats and the glass. Like many other buildings such as Brantford, Peterborough and Rimouski, the first row of seats is elevated above this moat area and you climb up stairs to either reach your seats or to an additional pathway around the top of the bowl. In some areas this top of bowl concourse is wide enough that you could easily fit another row or two of seats or add standing room. This alone could easily raise the capacity to north of 4,000. The rink’s roof arches high over the ice. The bowl of blue plastic seats is fairly new and comfortable enough. The seating bowl is slightly shallower than in most places, but it’s not nearly as bad as Plymouth or Chicago. Some of the views in the corners are not ideal, but at worst aren’t horrible either.
Viewing this game as a Jr A experience, OHLAG and I were a bit disappointed. The crowd of some 300 or so people were very thinly spread out and made no noise as we watched the hometown Hurricanes pound on the visitors from Lindsay. We knew coming in that the atmosphere was likely going to be a dud, but we had ulterior motives for our attendance. In 2025 OHL Commissioner Bryan Crawford made it known that the OHL would like to give York Region another try. You can debate all you want on whether or not this is a good idea, and most would likely say it’s not. But we wanted to see, if need be, if Ray Twinney could be called back into OHL service much like we saw with the Civic Centre in Brantford. We left that day with the conclusion that yes, it totally can. Some work would no doubt need to be done, but as a temporary venue this arena would meet OHL standards until a newer rink could be built in the area. Dressing rooms and player facilities would no doubt have to be upgraded. It would likely be a cramped experience and require the addition of more concession stands, seats, standing room and maybe even some low rent suites at the top of the bowl. But it could be done. The roof is high enough that there is plenty of room to install a video scoreboard. The footprint of the building itself could also be expanded on any of three different sides.
If the OHL never does come back to Ray Twinney, I am at least happy to have gotten to explore a former OHL arena and see a Jr A game take place here. If they could get the crowds, I would imagine this place could really be a fun place to watch hockey.
