Graine Wetsky Arena
At 11:00 UITC today a notice was lodged against all forty-eight registers simultaneously.
Le Council published an advisory at midnight recording that the announcement the Funds had undertaken to make before the close of the season had not arrived. That advisory was published at 00:00. Le Council will let the interval stand without characterising it.
Le Council carries the notice in full and unaltered, as it has carried the two before it, and files a note beneath it.
As lodged
GRAINE WETSKY FUNDS To the Forty-Eight Registers of Hokcay · 28 September
Friends —
It is finished! ❄️
Graine Wetsky Arena is complete and it is ready.
We told you in July that we were collecting for something. We told you again in September that it was not a secret, it was a Surprise, and that we intended to honour the difference. Today we honour it.
Here is what we built, in plain language, because plain language is a Value we hold dear.
The building. Seventy-one thousand seats under one roof, every one of them sold at the same price, because a Fair house is a Full house. Nine concourses. Four hundred and eight taps. A Recovery Assembly that is not fitted to the boards, because in this building the boards are not where the recovery happens — the building is the Assembly. Not one shaving leaves it. Not one ever will.
The ice. This is the part we are Proudest of and we want to be exact about it.
The sheet in Graine Wetsky Arena was not made. It was recovered. Every cup of it came off a sheet that somebody watched a game on. Forty-eight buildings contributed to it over ten weeks — every barn, every rink, every rock, from The Oldest Rink to the newest of the twenty-four. It is 1,012,800 kcups exactly and it is finished to twenty-five millimetres and R.I.N.K. may verify it whenever the Institute cares to walk in, and we would be Delighted to host them!
Nobody was asked to give anything up. Nothing was taken from anybody. This is ice that was going to melt. It melted for twenty seasons and nobody thought to catch it, and now it has not melted, and it is a sheet, and you may skate on it!
There is a little of every building in Hokcay in that sheet. We think that is rather Beautiful and we are not going to pretend we do not.
The place. Graine Wetsky Arena stands in the Recovery Zone, a jurisdiction constituted for the purpose on the 3rd of September, whose territory comprises the arena. It is not in a city. It is not in a country. It does not belong to a conference and it will never hold a club. It is not anybody's home ice and it cannot become anybody's home ice, and that is not a limitation of the design — it is the design.
The name. Graine Wetsky Arena is what the building is called today, and we are not sentimental about it. The naming rights are available to any party of good standing, on terms we would be Delighted to discuss. We would much rather you heard that from us than read it somewhere else!
And here is our offer.
Your citizens carried a petition. Eighty-one Seals, one a day, eighty-one people, for a fair venue for the biggest game in the sport. It passed. It was enacted. It was, we think, the finest thing anybody in Hokcay has done all year, and we have said so internally more than once.
And then there was nowhere to play it.
Graine Wetsky Arena is given to the league as the neutral site for the Final. There is no fee. There is no rent. There is no share, no gate, no naming consideration and no consideration of any kind. We do not want a penny and we will not accept one. There is no condition on it, either. You asked for neutral ice. There is now exactly one sheet of it in the world, and it is yours for the Final.
We have one more thing to say, and it is the only part of this with a condition in it. It concerns your clubs rather than the Final, and we will lodge it with the forty-eight registers once the regular season is over.
We will not impose it. The clubs must choose it. Forty-eight registers, forty-eight decisions, made by the people who hold the shares in them. If they say yes, we will be Delighted. If they say no, we will thank them for considering it, the Final will be played here all the same, and we will not raise the subject again.
We would not want it any other way. A gift that cannot be refused is not a gift and we know the difference.
Our statement, which we ask be reproduced in full wherever this notice is carried:
Shavings Make Arenas. It has been our Ambition from the first day and we have kept it in plain sight the whole way, because we have nothing to hide and never did.
Watch the HORN. Sign up a friend. And come and see it — the doors are open and the lights are on!
Yours in the sport, Graine Wetsky Funds
Le Council's note
Le Council will file four things and will then stop.
On the sheet. Le Council has verified the volume against the Institute's bulletin of the 16th and against the Funds' own recovery record, and the two agree. R.I.N.K. has been offered access and Le Council understands the Institute has accepted. Le Council's assessors will attend with them.
On the origin. The Almighty Ice has appeared in forty-eight places in twenty seasons and Le Council has never once been consulted beforehand. Arenas follow the Ice. The Ice does not follow an arena, has never followed an arena, and has raised every sheet in this sport without notice, without permission and without a jurisdiction.
The Ice did not raise this one. Le Council records who did.
On the venue. Le Council has no ruling to make, and states why. The enacted petition requires the Final to be played on neither finalist's ice. Le Council ruled on the 1st of September that there had never been a patch of neutral ice in twenty seasons, and that ruling stopped being true at 11:00 UITC on the 28th of September by the act of a party that is not The Almighty Ice and is not Le Permanent Council. There is now one sheet in Hockay that satisfies the petition, and the petition does not permit Le Council to decline it. The Final will be played at Graine Wetsky Arena.
Le Council observes that the notice above calls the venue a gift, and calls a gift that cannot be refused no gift at all, and that the two sentences are four paragraphs apart.
On usage. Le Council has one further matter and it is small, and Le Council raises it because Le Council raises it every time.
Every arena in Hockay carries an article. The Oldest Rink. La Ladera. Die Goue Myn. El Rincón Perdido. Forty-eight buildings and forty-eight articles, in five languages, without exception, for twenty seasons.
This one does not.
Le Council is not the body that names buildings. Le Council has never been the body that names buildings, and until this morning Le Council had no occasion to discover that.
Le Council notes that the notice offers the name for sale. Le Council expects that whoever buys it will not be buying an article either.
The document also says clubs. The forty-eight are teams.