I'm pleased to announce that the RinkAtlas database now includes all of the rinks used by the Maritime Junior 'A' Hockey League, the Ligue de Hockey Junior AAA du Quebec, and the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. These are the eastern-most junior hockey leagues in Canada.

An example of the recent additions is the Centre recreatif Joe Juneau that is home to the St. Lawrence Lions of the Ligue de Hockey Junior AAA du Quebec. The Centre recreatif Joe Juneau is in Pont-Rouge, Quebec (which is former RPI and Montreal Canadians' star Joe Juneau's hometown).

We are now moving on to building the database of rinks used by Junior teams and leagues in Ontario. We hope to be able to announce the completion of those additions to our database soon.

Question: How do I build a link from my website to a specific rink in the RinkAtlas Database?

Answer: The easiest way to build a link from your website to a specific rink in RinkAtlas is to:

1. find the rink using the search function,
2. copy the link from the graphic on the toolbar. The resulting URL will be of the format:

http://www.rinkatlas.com/?guid=nnnn&source=linkto

3. paste that URL into the markup on your website.

If you need to find dozens or hundreds of URLs at a time, because you are building a sophisticated interface to RinkAtlas, contact us for help by sending an email to support [at] rinkatlas.com.

I'm pleased to announce that the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Officials Association is a RinkAtlas partner. The ECHOA is a hockey officiating organization that is responsible for officiating all of the games of the Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association, a Division I college club hockey league.

The ECHOA replaced hand written directions to 12 rinks where ECHA teams play with corresponding links to RinkAtlas. This makes sense because ECHOA members live anywhere between Northern New Jersey and Northern Virginia, so typical rink directions are far less useful than door-to-door directions generated by computer.

If you have a website that provides rink directions, and you'd like to replace them with links to RinkAtlas, we make it easy. Refer to How Do I Link to a Specific Rink in the RinkAtlas Database? for more details. Please email us at support [at] rinkatlas.com if you need additional help.

I'm pleased to announce that HockeyRefs.com has become a RinkAtlas Partner Website. HockeyRefs.com is an internationally-known resource for ice hockey officials.

I've been reading HockeyRefs.com for several years to keep informed about officiating issues in higher levels of hockey in North America. They also do an excellent job of covering hockey officiating in Europe and Asia, as their coverage of Bob Langdon's trip to Northern Europe clearly indicates.

HockeyRefs.com is providing RinkAtlas with valuable exposure to a large and influential Canadian audience. It also exposes us to audiences in parts of the United States where we haven't been able to do much marketing. I'm sure that this will help increase the buzz around our site.