When hockey players complain about a lack of ice, they’re probably not talking about climate change. Chittenden County skaters, in particular, have long lamented the dearth of indoor rinks. The area has just five full ice sheets (and one half, the Studio Ice at the Gordon H. Paquette Ice Arena at Burlington’s Leddy Park) in four arenas for scores of youth, scholastic, club, collegiate and adult recreational — aka “beer league” — teams. And that doesn’t factor in figure skaters.
Shelburne-born Peter Lenes, 38, was just a squirt — hockey talk for 9- to 10-year-olds — when the newest local rink, C. Douglas Cairns Arena, opened its first sheet in South Burlington in 1995. (Its second opened in 2001.) But he made the most of his ice time and launched a playing career that would include four stellar years with the University of Vermont Catamounts (2005 to 2009) and stints in the U.S. Hockey League, the East Coast Hockey League, since renamed ECHL, and the American Hockey League, as well as with pro teams in Denmark and Austria.
Lenes, now a Williston resident, was a fan favorite on the UVM ice. He earned more fans in 2019, when he and former UVM teammate Torrey Mitchell (2004 to 2007) turned a nondescript Essex Junction retail space owned by his father, Climb High founder and Vermont Sports Hall of Fame inductee Helmut Lenes, into Elev802. Their first hockey training facility features a 56-by-36-foot indoor refrigerated rink and 1,200-square-foot gym.
The Elev802 enterprise, which specializes in individualized training, will go bigger early next year when Peter Lenes opens a second Elev802 location on the site of the recently closed Palace 9 Cinemas in South Burlington, this one with a 100-by-60-foot sheet.
“We kind of went into it blind, not knowing if the one-on-one service for hockey lessons was going to be something,” Lenes said.
At the time, the concept was not entirely new locally. In 2016, former Saint Michael’s College hockey team captain and current women’s head coach Meghan Sweezey launched Girls 4 Hockey, which continues to rent rinks for its robust offering of private lessons, clinics and camps.
Lenes and National Hockey League vet Mitchell were in a position to capitalize on the trend of private lessons, with their pro hockey name recognition, buzz-generating pop-up clinics at area rinks and a social media presence that played up the fun of learning — especially Lenes’ gravity-defying stick-handling tricks. “It’s a really big niche in the market,” Lenes said.
Just five years in, Elev802 not only is set to open its second Vermont facility but also operates four others out of state: Elev802 Boston and Elev802 South Shore, both in Massachusetts; Elev802 New Jersey; and Elev802 Tampa. Lenes said Elev802 Denver and Elev802 Las Vegas could be open within weeks.
“He’s a phenomenon right now in the hockey world.” Philip Calder
Mitchell, who played with five NHL teams, including the Montréal Canadiens, recently parted ways with the company, but Lenes remains bullish on the business. Losing Mitchell’s name association with Elev802 hasn’t stopped the soaring ascent of Lenes in online hockey fandom, where he’s better known as Swaggy P — that’s @SwaggyP_63 on Instagram and theswaggyp_63 on TikTok — to more than 100,000 followers on each platform.
“He’s a phenomenon right now in the hockey world,” said Philip Calder, a hockey dad from Brooklyn, who recently traveled to Vermont with his wife, Lisa, so their two sons, Matthew, 19, and Eric, 6, could meet and train with the man behind the media. According to Philip, they were impressed that Lenes had taken the time to reply to Eric’s comments on his posts. “He was like an everyday person,” Lisa added.
On the ice, Swaggy P was a shade less, er, puckish than the influencer and Bauer equipment brand ambassador who had captivated the Calders. In one-on-one training sessions costing upwards of $150 per hour, a player rightly expects to learn something more conventional than how to do a “Michigan” — a cheeky shot that looks more like lacrosse than hockey.
It was clear in his session with Eric Calder that he wanted to set an upbeat tone, starting with tossing him pucks to swat out of the air — maybe not terribly practical, but fun.
“When the kids are enjoying themselves, they’re way more apt to listen and get better,” Lenes said. The coach is intensely focused — but finds moments to smile.
Matthew hoped to improve his skating — “edgework” is the technical term — and up his game in the Division 9 Ice Hockey League adult rec league of Coney Island. “He’s very understanding, very careful with detail,” he said of Lenes.
Eric was working to keep up with the Brooklyn Aviators 8U — 8 years and under — travel team, according to Philip. He said he saw promise there: “My younger guy, we think the bigger picture with him … I’ll be happy with a nice scholarship.”
The Calders are among the families who hope to see a return on what can be a major financial investment in youth hockey. A player need not be gunning for glory to train at Elev802, however. Lenes has worked with players across the spectrum of ambition, whether they’re just learning to skate, stepping up from a B team to an A team, making a school roster, or shooting for collegiate and professional hockey.
“Everyone has different goals,” he said. “And that’s what we try to key in on, rather than sitting here saying that if you come here, you’re going to play Division 1 hockey or you’re going to go play pro hockey. That’s just unrealistic.”
When the rewards of private training are intrinsic — greater self-confidence, for example — the bet may be more secure. Hockey dad Geoff Halsted said his daughter Maddie gained that from her work at Elev802. A current 14U player in St. Albans, she has been a Girls 4 Hockey regular and seized other training opportunities where she could find them. Elev802’s year-round offering filled a gap in seasons and gave her a way to “keep skating, keep improving,” he said.
An important dimension of Maddie’s Elev802 experience was working with Jess Koizumi, a former college and professional player with more than a decade of Division I coaching experience — including at UVM — and former UVM star forward Natálie Mlýnková. “We liked it from a role-model perspective — empowering the female athlete,” Halsted said. Mlýnková in particular “totally understood being a female mentor,” he noted.
According to Lenes, fostering those bonds between young players and local stars is foundational to learning and part of the Elev802 business model. “It’s pretty cool to see when a player comes for a lesson and it’s with a UVM kid or a St. Mike’s kid that they saw playing in a game,” he said. “That was really the emphasis of the business.”
It’s hard to overestimate the value of good mentorship. But private coaching is a premium product, and organized hockey in general is expensive: gear, travel, ice time, registration fees. If Elev802 is financially feasible for households already on the hook for youth hockey, that’s because it tends to supplement a regular training schedule rather than substitute for it.
Rick Villamil is a vice president and board member of the Essex Youth Hockey Association overseeing the “house” (non-travel) teams. He has taken some players to Elev802 on a semimonthly or monthly basis, he said, and values the “up close and personal” nature of coaching there and the possibilities that Elev802 represents.
“Having a place like that, that was focused for these athletes, really showed the kids, ‘Wow, this is the next step up,'” he said.
A seasoned hockey dad and youth coach, Villamil knows that full-team practices on full ice are essential to player and team development. But he also sees unique benefits in the Elev802 boutique approach. For instance, when he brings a team to Elev802, some of the roster can hit the ice while the others hit the gym. Plus, as Lenes added, targeted “small fixes” are harder to teach “the masses on the ice” in an echoey arena.
While the cost of Elev802 training adds to registration fees, another benefit Villamil sees is its convenient location. It’s not uncommon for Essex Youth Hockey community members to have to drive out of town in the evening for ice time — to Waterbury, say, or Leddy Park. Elev802 offers an occasional alternative: “All of the benefits definitely outweigh the cons,” he said.
The new Elev802 facility in South Burlington will open another avenue for skating as well as “dry land” workouts at VASTA Performance Training and Physical Therapy, which will share the space. The cotenant choice was part of what Lenes, ever the trickster, calls creating “a fun zone.”
Like executing a good slap shot, business success requires a few skillful moves. Lenes’ knowledge of the hockey world — actual and virtual — has given him a good windup, as attested by Elev802’s ongoing expansion. Maybe even more bankable than thousands of social media likes for Swaggy P is the trust he’s building in the local hockey community.
Villamil conjured an image of Lenes that evokes the wisdom gained from experience: “He’s … like a guru on a mountain with a hockey stick.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Stick Seasons | Peter Lenes’ hockey training company, Elev802, lines up a second indoor rink in Chittenden County”
This article appears in The Winter Preview Issue 2024.
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