‘There is a huge conflict of interest,’ Las Vegas youth ice hockey groups accuse VGK operator of pushing out independent teams

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Getting knocked down and bouncing back up is an art even more difficult to grasp while on solid ice.

Nathan Emens said his nine and eleven-year-olds learned that art without breaking the bank.

“Youth hockey is their life,” Emens said along a Central Valley street, speaking about his kids’ passion. “(We paid) significantly less than what we saw elsewhere, like a tenth maybe.”

They play for the Las Vegas Ice Warriors, an independent youth ice hockey nonprofit program Gina Usufzy established in 2017. She said the idea sparked after her first-born child began playing on the ice in 2012.

“There was a hockey community here, but it was very, you know, very small. You wouldn’t have known about it,” Usufzy said, sitting at a patio table outside 8 News Now’s station. “I remember talking to a parent one day, and they were like, ‘there’s just no way we can afford that gear.’ They weren’t going to spend six, seven hundred dollars on brand new gear for their kid to try hockey, to figure out a week later that the kid doesn’t even want it and you can’t return it because you kid already sweated in it.”

So she went out and found that gear. At one point, piling donations flooded portions of her garage until she was able to secure a cage inside the former Fiesta Ice Arena.

That arena was also the Ice Warrior’s home since its inception. However, now Usufzy has a new landlord, one she said is pushing her out and helping themselves move in.

The Vegas Golden Knights (VGK) partnered with Agora Realty, a California developer, as the Fiesta Ice Arena’s operator in November 2023. The hotel and casino portion of Fiesta Station was demolished earlier that summer to make way for a $20 million, 100,000-square-foot facility that is expected to feature two sheets of ice for 3,000 spectators called Hylo Park. It’s part of a larger $380 million redevelopment project in the area.

At an October press conference revealing the plans, former NHL Goaltender Darren Eliot said, “We’re here to make sure that the kids can continue to play hockey.”

He now gets his paychecks from VGK as Vice President of Hockey Programming and Facility Operations.

He’s also the president of NAHA, or the Nevada Amateur Hockey Association. It’s the governing body for amateur hockey in the state.

“They’re like an HOA for hockey,” Usufzy said.

She used to be one of the NAHA voting members under the previous Fiesta Ice Arena operator but lost it after operational hands switched. Each vote is offered to an “active, amateur ice hockey association located in the State of Nevada,” according to the NAHA guidebook.

There are only four ice rinks across the Vegas Valley. Most of them are operated by VGK: City National Arena in Summerlin, America First Center in Henderson, and now, the Fiesta Ice Arena in North Las Vegas.

Eliot, as president, does not get a vote. The programs within VGK-operated rinks do.

“Because they hold most rinks, the majority of rinks in this town, it’s all of their people, and he controls their paychecks, essentially,” Usufzy said. “There’s no checks and balances to it, right? It’s pretty much if they want a bylaw to say this, they have the manpower to do it.”

She needed an affirmative vote to expand or become a travel program, which would make the roughly 200 children across her nine teams qualifiable for state and national championships. The other voting members denied her, she said by citing NAHA bylaws for “new member association,” though it has been an existing team for years.

Now, what little ice time she has left is not enough, saying Fiesta Ice Arena operators reduced her weekly allotment.

“Our ice time got chopped, and they started bringing in, expanding their Junior Knights teams into our building. So, while our ice time was suffering, their ice time got added,” Usufzy said. “There is a huge conflict of interest on our NAHA board.”

She is not alone. Kerry Quinney is having a similar problem.

She runs Spectrum on Ice, a nonprofit for children with autism and other developmental abilities who play year-round. She said her group has historically gotten an hour of practice a week.

“We haven’t been able to practice for the last couple of months because of the lack of ice,” Quinney said during a virtual interview, speaking about difficulties in communication with the Fiesta Ice Arena operator. “Nobody would return any of my emails. Nobody would return a call.”

As parents of her group have started to “pick up on things,” she’s weighing the potential of missing an annual spring tournament due to the lack of practice.

“Somebody needs to do this for these kids. Like, you can’t just not give them ice. You just can’t do that. It’s not right,” Quinney said. “I just want the kids to be able to skate.”

On the other side of the valley, Kirk Brooks owned the Las Vegas Ice Center long before VGK’s 2017 arrival. He’s also president of The Storm, once the only youth travel organization in the valley.

“When they came in, they wanted to make it all the Knights,” Brooks said, overlooking a sheet of ice from the adjoining bar to the ice center.

The prospect of sporting an official NHL team’s logo was persuasive enough for Brooks to help expand the newly formed Junior Knights program with the help of his, he said.

“To change (The Storm) over to the Knights—obviously, they had no kids. We had all the kids. We changed it over because we would get, you know, the privilege of having the Knights jerseys, things like this,” Brooks said. “After that happened for two years, and we were supposed to be 50-50 partners, it was, ‘see you later. You’re out the door. We don’t need you anymore. We got your kids. Now, they’ve played for the Knights for two years. They’re not going anywhere.’”

Now, the clock is ticking for Usufzy and the Ice Warriors. She was offered and signed a VGK contract that caps the age of which kids she can teach, phasing her out of the Fiesta Ice Arena in the next eight years.

She said it was between accepting the contract or ceasing operations now.

“Every year that that birth year moves up, I lose a team,” Usufzy said. “You can create new teams under one association, but that’s one association that’s controlling everything.”

The City of North Las Vegas and Agora Realty declined to comment on this story. VGK also declined an interview with Eliot on his behalf.

Instead, a representative said in an emailed statement to 8 News Now:

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement that will allow the Ice Warriors program to continue playing at Hylo Park Ice Arena while in compliance with Nevada Amateur Hockey Association and USA Hockey regulations. Maintaining and building upon existing programming was exactly our goal when we assumed these leadership responsibilities at Hylo Park.”

Parents, like the Emens, fear the only youth ice hockey options left for their kids will eventually be out of reach within their price budget. VGK does not publicly advertise the cost to play in the Junior Knights program, though Usufzy indicates it is hundreds of dollars annually.

“It’s really putting the parents in a pickle, and I think everybody’s kind of scrambling to figure out what is next,” Emens said. “We were sold a bill of goods when the Golden Knights came in: they’re going to develop youth hockey. What they didn’t say, I guess, is they wanted to develop it only under their brand.”

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