Countless big league dreams begin with groups of kids playing hockey on tiny backyard rinks all over Canada, but it’s not often such a scene plays out on the west side of Vancouver.

Darcy Downs knows all about outdoor hockey having grown up in Ontario, but he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to share the experience with his 11-year-old son Jesse.

"I've been telling him stories about when I was young and skating on rinks in the backyard and how we had outdoor rinks back east,” said Darcy. “And he said, well can we do one in our backyard?"

Hoping for just the right conditions, Jesse’s been keeping his eye on the forecast for weeks.

"On Friday, I just came home and asked my mom where my dad was and she said he's outside building a rink,” said Jesse. “Pretty big surprise. I came out and saw all these boards built."

Darcy piled up all the snow from the yard and packed it down, and then around 7 p.m. on Friday he began spraying it with a hose, repeating the procedure every hour until 2 a.m.

At 6 a.m. the next day, still wearing his pajamas, Jesse hit the ice for the first time in his own backyard.

“It’s incredible. I get to come out and play hockey. Take a little break to drink some hot chocolate. It’s awesome,” he said.

For several days, his eight-year-old sister Maggie and their friends from the neighbourhood have joined Jesse on the ice morning, noon and night.

Any rink being used that much requires a lot of maintenance and using PVC pipe and his hose Darcy managed to build a device to flood the ice evenly.

"Jesse had actually looked it up, too. And figured out there's a way to build this thing to flood the ice if we use a towel,” he said. “So I took the ideas and put it together and made a little Zamboni device to be able to cover it with just a nice thin layer of water."

As a father wistfully reminiscing about his own childhood, Darcy can’t imagine anything better than this.

"To have a Christmas Eve where the kids were skating in the backyard playing hockey is like old-time Canada. It's what Canada's all about,” he said.

Jesse’s hockey destiny hasn’t been fully written yet, but the story of the 2017 Christmas rink is already part of family lore.