Scotiabank Pond Toronto Transportation
Four sheets of ice at 57 Carl Hall Road, and a car park that fills before the first warm-up. We move the whole team in one vehicle: players, coaching staff, sticks and every bag, dropped at the door and collected when the last game ends. Hold the chauffeur by the hour from approximately $175, or put an eighteen-player roster on a 27-Passenger Mini Bus from approximately $250 an hour.
Scotiabank Pond transportation rates
The vehicle stays with you between rinks and through a long afternoon, and the equipment stays in the hold the entire time. Pick the vehicle by the size of your roster and by how much gear travels with it, then read the minimum spend column, which is a dollar floor on the booking rather than a number of hours.
Up to 27 passengers
27-Passenger Mini Bus
The default for a full minor hockey roster. Eighteen players, coaching staff and parents ride together, and there is real luggage space underneath for the bags rather than a scramble to stack them on seats.
Up to 56 passengers
56-Passenger Coach
Two teams, or one team travelling with its families. Undercarriage bays swallow a full set of bags and sticks without anyone holding anything on their lap.
7 to 14 passengers
Regular Sprinter
Fourteen seats. Right for a half roster, a call-up group or the coaching staff moving separately. Bag volume is the limit here, not the seat count.
Up to 14 passengers
Executive Sprinter
Fourteen seats with a better cabin. Teams book it when the roster is in the vehicle for a long stretch of the day rather than a short crosstown run.
Up to 35 passengers
35-Seat Limousine Bus
Thirty-five seats for a club travelling as a block, or a team plus the family contingent on a weekend that runs to several games.
Hourly prices are approximate and include the chauffeur, fuel and insurance for the hours you book. Additional hours are billed at the same hourly rate. HST at 13% and gratuity of 15 to 20% are added on top. Child seats are $25 each and an additional stop is from $30, both shown on your quote before you approve it.
Team charter rates by the hour
Every vehicle we run for teams is in the table below. The Cadillac Escalade and the Jet Sprinter sit at the bottom because they are what a coaching group or a scout books when it travels apart from the bus, not what carries a roster.
Additional hours are billed at the same hourly rate. Overtime, a shootout or a delayed resurface does not need a new booking. Your chauffeur agrees the extra time with you before it starts rather than adding it afterwards.
One trip out and back, priced by the trip
This suits a single game with a known finish and a parent group happy to make its own way home. It does not suit a tournament day, because the moment you want the vehicle to sit through a game you are buying hours, not journeys.
Transfer prices are approximate, one price per leg within the GTA, set by distance, with no minimum. They include the chauffeur, fuel and insurance. HST at 13% and gratuity of 15 to 20% are added on top.
Where is Scotiabank Pond in Toronto
Beyond league play it hosts youth, women’s and adult hockey, the Varsity Hockey School, and clubs including the Brampton Canadettes and Stouffville-Markham girls hockey associations. Pads can be rented for private sessions. Four pads under one roof is the thing that shapes a visiting team’s day: a tournament can run several games at once in the same building, so the car park turns over four times faster than it would at a single-pad community rink, and it does that while one set of families is arriving and another is leaving.
The 101 Downsview Park bus runs from Downsview station by way of Sheppard, John Drury and Carl Hall Road. That is fine for one player with a stick bag. It is not a plan for a roster carrying full kit, which is why teams that try it once usually do not try it twice.
Scotiabank Pond drop off and parking
We will not quote you a parking price for the site, because none is published that we can stand behind, and a made-up number is worse than no number. What we can tell you is the part that actually costs a team its morning: on a busy tournament day the lots fill while the first games are still on, and the family that leaves home last parks furthest from the door.
One vehicle removes that entirely. The chauffeur pulls to the kerb, the bags come out of the hold at the entrance, and the vehicle goes and waits somewhere else. Nobody circles, nobody carries a bag four hundred metres, and nobody arrives at the room after the coach has started talking.
Hockey equipment and bag space on a team bus
Run the arithmetic before you book anything. A full-size bag is roughly the size of a large suitcase turned on its side, and a roster brings one each, plus goalie kit which is bigger again, plus a stick bag that is nearly two metres long and does not bend. Fourteen seats in a passenger van does not mean fourteen bags in the cabin. It means fourteen people sitting with gear on their knees, or two trips.
What we book instead: a vehicle with dedicated hold space underneath, so bags and sticks go in at the start, stay locked while everyone is inside the rink, and come out at the end. The 27-Passenger Mini Bus and the 56-Passenger Coach both carry a full roster’s equipment this way. On a Sprinter, tell us the bag count when you ask for the quote and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.
Goalies are the case people forget. Goal pads, a chest protector, a blocker and a trapper take roughly double a skater’s volume, and no goalie wants that gear stacked under everyone else’s. Say on the quote that you have one or two and we size the vehicle for it.
Tournament day transportation at Scotiabank Pond
A four-pad building can put your team on the ice twice in a day, sometimes with five hours in between. Without a vehicle that gap is a problem: families scatter, somebody drives home and does not come back, and the second game starts with three players missing. With one, the team eats together, the gear never leaves the hold, and everyone is back in the room on time.
It also covers the day that runs long. A round robin that goes to a tiebreaker, a resurface that slips twenty minutes, a game that goes to overtime. Additional hours are billed at the same hourly rate.
Pickup addresses, the roster count, the bag count and the coaching staff. You get the chauffeur’s name and number in writing, not on the morning.
The vehicle is cleared and warm before anyone gets in. Bags go into the hold, not onto seats.
On an hourly booking it does not leave. Somewhere to sit, somewhere to leave gear, and one place the whole group meets.
The team leaves as a unit rather than over forty minutes in eight cars.
Early morning ice times and winter driving
Around 80 percent of league game ice falls on a weekend. Weekend ice at a four-pad arena means the early slots get used, and a first-game start puts a team on the road before sunrise in the middle of winter. That is the least appealing drive of the year and the one most often done by a parent who has had five hours of sleep.
A commercially operated vehicle changes the risk profile of that morning. The chauffeur is licensed and insured to carry passengers for hire, the vehicle is maintained and inspected on a commercial schedule, and it is cleared of snow and warmed before the team boards. Nobody in your group is responsible for other people’s children on an unploughed road at six in the morning.
What a team bus costs per family
The same arithmetic on the other two vehicles teams book most:
Set that against what eight or nine separate cars actually cost a group once you count fuel, parking and the wear of a winter round trip. We are not going to invent your families’ numbers, but most managers who work it out once book the bus the following season without asking.
The part that does not show up in either column is the one parents mention afterwards. They watched the game. They were not parking, not driving back tired, and at a team dinner nobody had to be the designated driver.
Minor hockey tournaments at Scotiabank Pond
The A Challenge Cup is an annual non-contact tournament run by the league and played at Scotiabank Pond in November. It has been drawn at 40 teams across five divisions, Under-14 through Under-18, with eight teams in each. A field that size fills the building, and a team travelling in for it needs its transport settled well before the draw comes out. We cover that weekend in detail on the A Challenge Cup page.
The Platinum Cup is one of the league’s early-season tournaments, played at Scotiabank Pond in November. Long an Under-11 event, it has widened to carry Under-10 as well, and has been drawn at 48 teams across six divisions: U10 and U11 at A, AA and AAA, eight teams each. That is double its former 24-team field. The youngest age groups bring the most parents per player, which changes the vehicle you want. That is set out on the Platinum Cup page.
For the wider picture, including how teams move between rinks across the region on a multi-venue weekend, read moving a team through a league tournament weekend.
Minor hockey team transportation across the GTA
The Greater Toronto Hockey League runs across the Greater Toronto Area and the Lake Ontario Region, taking in Toronto, Mississauga, Markham, Vaughan, Brampton, Oakville, Richmond Hill and Ajax-Pickering. We pick up from all of it, and from Etobicoke, North York, Scarborough and Pickering besides. Multiple pickup points on one booking are normal for a team: send the addresses with the quote request and we build the route and the departure time around them.
Extra practice ice is commonly found at Chesswood Arenas, Westwood Arenas and Canlan Ice Sports York. Runs between rinks in one day are priced as part of the same hourly booking rather than as separate journeys, because the vehicle never left you.
Chauffeuropolis is an independent transportation company. We have no connection to the Greater Toronto Hockey League or to any club or tournament, and we do not act on their behalf. We move the team, nothing more.
Scotiabank Pond transportation: questions
How much does team transportation to Scotiabank Pond cost?
By the hour, which is how most teams book it: approximately $175 an hour on the Regular Sprinter from a $525 minimum spend, approximately $250 an hour on the 27-Passenger Mini Bus from $1,000, and approximately $300 an hour on the 56-Passenger Coach from $1,800. HST at 13% and gratuity of 15 to 20% are added on top.
Should we book by the hour or as a return trip?
By the hour whenever the vehicle needs to wait, which is almost every game day and every tournament day. Book it as a return trip only when nobody needs the vehicle between the drop-off and the pick-up, and the finish time is known.
Will eighteen hockey bags actually fit?
On the 27-Passenger Mini Bus and the 56-Passenger Coach, yes, in dedicated hold space underneath. A full-size player bag is roughly 35 by 18 by 18 inches and a stick bag is close to two metres long, so eighteen of them is a volume problem, not a seat problem. Tell us the bag count with your quote request and we size the vehicle against it.
We have two goalies. Does that change the vehicle?
It can. Goal pads, a chest protector, a blocker and a trapper take roughly double a skater’s volume. Say so on the quote and we account for it rather than discovering it at the kerb on the morning.
What size vehicle does a full minor hockey roster need?
The 27-Passenger Mini Bus at approximately $250 an hour is the usual answer for eighteen players plus coaching staff plus their equipment. A fourteen-seat Sprinter seats a half roster comfortably but runs out of bag space before it runs out of seats.
Can parents travel on the same vehicle as the team?
Yes, and it is the reason many teams step up from a Sprinter to the 27-Passenger Mini Bus or the 56-Passenger Coach. Give us the total headcount including adults and we quote the vehicle that carries all of it.
Where is Scotiabank Pond?
57 Carl Hall Road, Toronto, Ontario M3K 2E2, in Downsview Park. It has four NHL-size ice pads under one roof, including a 1,000-seat feature rink.
How many ice pads does Scotiabank Pond have?
Four, all NHL-size, across about 150,000 square feet, with two of them set up for sledge hockey. That is why a tournament there can run several games at once.
Where does the driver drop the team off?
At an unloading point agreed with you before the day. The arena does not publish a marked coach bay, so we settle it in advance rather than working it out with a roster standing in the cold. On-site parking at Downsview Park runs off Carl Hall Road, Canuck Avenue and Downsview Park Boulevard.
How much is parking at Scotiabank Pond?
We do not publish a figure, because no rate is published that we can stand behind and a guessed number would be worse than none. What matters for a team is that the lots fill on a busy day, which is exactly what one vehicle and a kerbside drop removes.
Does the driver wait during the game?
On an hourly booking, yes. The chauffeur and the vehicle stay with you for the hours booked, so the equipment stays in the hold and the team has one place to meet. On a by-the-trip booking the vehicle is not held; the return leg is scheduled separately.
What happens if the game runs long or goes to overtime?
Additional hours are billed at the same hourly rate, agreed with your chauffeur before the extra time starts rather than added afterwards. Nobody is left behind because a game went to a shootout.
Can one vehicle cover more than one rink in a day?
Yes, and that is the main reason teams book by the hour. The vehicle stays with you between venues, so a two-rink day is one booking rather than three separate transport problems.
How early should we book?
Four to six weeks for a regular season game day. Eight weeks or more for a tournament weekend, because every team in the draw wants a group vehicle on the same two days and mini buses and coaches go first.
Is a team bus cheaper than families driving separately?
Split across the roster it is smaller than most people expect. Six hours on the 27-Passenger Mini Bus is about $1,500, which is roughly $83 for each of eighteen families before tax and gratuity. Six hours on the 56-Passenger Coach is about $1,800, or $60 across thirty families. What each family currently spends on fuel and parking is theirs to work out, and we will not invent it.
Is the driver licensed and insured to carry children?
Yes. These are commercially operated vehicles with a licensed, insured chauffeur, maintained and inspected on a commercial schedule. That is a different standard from a parent volunteering a personal car, which matters when the passengers are other people’s children.
Can you handle a six in the morning departure in winter?
That is a normal booking for us. The vehicle is cleared of snow and warmed before the team gets in, and the chauffeur is working rather than driving tired after a short night.
Can we be picked up from more than one address?
Yes. Send the full list with your quote request and we build the route and the departure time around it. An additional stop is from $30.
Do you pick up outside Toronto?
Yes. Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Richmond Hill, Oakville, Ajax, Pickering, Etobicoke, North York and Scarborough are all routine pickups for a run to Scotiabank Pond.
Can the team association be invoiced instead of paying by card?
Yes. Club and association bookings are routinely invoiced, which is easier than one parent carrying the cost and collecting from everyone else afterwards.
Do you provide child seats?
Yes, $25 each, fitted in advance with ages given at booking.
What is included in the price?
The chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel and insurance. Figures are approximate. HST at 13% and gratuity of 15 to 20% are added on top and appear on your quote before you approve it.
What does a straight return trip cost instead?
A return is two legs. The published Regular Sprinter return is from approximately $1,000 within the GTA, which is two $500 legs priced and held together. Across fourteen families that is roughly $71 each before tax and gratuity.
Which tournaments run at Scotiabank Pond?
The A Challenge Cup, a non-contact event for Under-14 through Under-18, and the Platinum Cup for Under-10 and Under-11, both played there in November. Both fill the building, so book group vehicles early.
How do we get a quote?
Send the pickup addresses, the number of players and staff, the bag count, and the hours you need the vehicle held. We reply with one fixed price, usually within the hour.
Get a fixed quote for your team
Send the pickup addresses, the number of players and staff, the bag count and the hours you need the vehicle held. We reply with one fixed price covering the chauffeur, fuel and insurance. Figures are approximate. HST at 13% and gratuity of 15 to 20% are added on top.