It may still be a Saskatchewan drought for Kraft Hockeyville after losing the bid once again back in August.

But it turns out that the town of Pense, Saskatchewan still came out a winner.

After reaching the final round, the small town of just over 500 residents lost to Twillingate Nova Scotia during the summer; and in turn, losing out on $250,000 dollars that would have gone a long way towards some much-needed upgrades to the town's rink.

As Swift Current Online had reported, the town had previously raised $106,000 towards the replacement of the 30-year-old brine piping system that sits underneath the ice and keeps both the hockey and the curling facilities operating.

The consolation prize of $25,000 dollars received in the eventual loss would still have been unable to cover the estimated $300,000 dollar bill that a new system would reportedly cost.

And that was how it sat until social media decided got involved.

Leah Barnard is a member of the Pense Memorial Rink board.

"By 9:00 a.m we were all in our own little group chat with the rink board and someone happened to get on Twitter. Brett Wilson was the first person to make a post saying that he was going to match the $25,000 donation."

Brett Wilson; the Saskatchewan-born businessman most famous for his role as one of the dragons on Dragon's Den, had matched the money provided by Kraft Hockeyville and from there a snowball effect took hold.

"Everybody just sort of hopped on board, not necessarily matching the $25,000 but we had people from the east messaging us saying what a great job we'd done. And obviously, right away we said well if we're leaving money on the table, we don't really want to necessarily do that when people are asking to make a donation. So a gofundme page was set up."

As a result of the added interest, and the inclusion of an additional $30,000 dollar grant from the Richardson Foundation, the town announced at the end of October that it had raised the money necessary for the needed repairs.

Barnard added that the rink has been opened for the season, and so the work will not be able to start until the spring, but that there is work to be done before that, regardless.

"Just due to the timing of the funding as it was received, we had to get the ice in and all that stuff. The next steps we're doing is going out for a new quote. Our first quote was about two years old. Obviously the pandemic and everything that's happened we're expecting a little bit of a price increase for some of the renovations and stuff that we need to get done under there. So that's sort of the next steps and we've got a good crew and we're ready to go and tack all of that."