If you think hockey isn’t fast enough, try AirBlade.

That’s the tagline of Mark Sendo, the CEO and founder of AirBlade – a new extreme inline hockey sport that takes the concepts of table air hockey and merges in with traditional ice hockey and inline roller skating.

The sport will be played on a rink made of 4-foot-by-8-foot high-density polyethylene boards, with holes one-eighth of an inch wide drilled to allow air flow for the puck to hover on a frictionless surface. When adjusted for a full-size rink, Sendo said there will be more than 2.2 million airflow holes in the floor.

A lot of traditional inline hockey rules will apply, but the major differences with the new sport are in the flooring, the puck – which will resemble an air hockey puck – and the scoring. Traditional goals will count for one point, but like table air hockey, there will be a slot in the back of the net. If the puck passes through that slot the goal is worth two points.

Sendo imagined the concept of this life-size, fully playable air hockey rink in 1999, and has finally assembled a team of designers, architects, builders and partners to make the new sport and 85-by-200-foot rink a reality.

Fred Beal, president of Ann Arbor-based JC Beal Construction, is partnering with Sendo to build the rink and see the 15-year dream come to fruition.

“We came out with a version of this rink that was effectively about the size of (a conference room) table top, but with the concept being to create this new sport, or a new version of a sport, that would be very high pace,” Beal said.

“The technology related to this relates to the air flow issues, creating an underfloor pressurized plenum through which air comes through the surface and allows the puck to basically hover. That means it’ll go as fast as you want it to or as fast as you’re able to hit it. And combined with that, we’re really just trying to amp up the experience with lighting and sound.”

The sport has already piqued the interest of a variety of hockey and inline enthusiasts. Sendo reached out to Labeda, a California-based company that makes inline roller skate wheels and accessories, and Charlie Yoder, the commissioner of the Professional Inline Hockey Association.

Both parties, Sendo said, have been instrumental in molding some of the rules and gameplay of the sport. Players from the Detroit Red Wings Alumni Association – including former players Joey Kocur, Darren McCarty and Petr Kilma – have also taken to the new sport and have publically endorsed it.

Because of how well-received the sport has been in the introductory phase, Sendo was able to ink a contract with Ford Field to host an eight-team, single elimination AirBlade tournament in Detroit in late-May 2014. He said he is in talks with national media – such as Spike, ESPN and FoxSports – to host the three-day tournament, which will culminate in a live, Pay-Per-View championship game.

Before the culminating championship game, players from the Red Wings Alumni Association will square off against other former NHL players who have yet to be named.

Mickey Redmond and Ken Daniels-- longtime play-by-play and color commentators for the Red Wings -- will call the championship game.

“We want hybrid teams and hybrid athletes, not just pro hockey players and not just pro inline skaters or extreme skaters. This tournament will find out who will become the star in this sport,” Sendo said.

Yoder has been charged with providing five of the eight teams who will compete at the Ford Field tournament. Teams will come from Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh and Detroit. The other three teams will be assembled through a social media effort that will be launched by Sendo’s team in the near future.

“As this sport evolves, we’ve got other ideas, but we want to start with the new net and scoring, the new puck and the new air pressurized surface and see how that goes, but we have some things planned that will take the sport to another level,” he said.

The team has already built two scale-model rinks to test the feasibility of the sport and the playability of the surface. After constructing the small, tabletop model, Sendo invested about $225,000 to build a 24-by-40-foot version that was tested by local youth hockey groups.

“We literally had to pull the kids off the rink. It was a great experience for everyone involved. It’s got this wow affect that makes people delighted to even see it,” Sendo said.

Beal added: “In the big picture we’re creating a sport opportunity that doesn’t exist. On top of that, it’s just going to be an exciting, fast-paced, different experience than is available for other sports.”

In the time since getting the positive feedback from the test run with the small rink, Beal has been working on sourcing parts and supplies for the construction of the full-size rink.

The group said there is a lot of pressure right now to get the rink constructed for play at Ford Field with the event less than 90 days away.

“We have two-and-a-half months until the Pay-Per-View and to do something that no one has ever done,” Sendo said.

“We’ve got to get promotional materials done and things like that, and we have to do it without a pro rink built to show game footage. There are a lot of challenges, but this is the team to do it.”

Beal said the crew is waiting for parts to arrive so they can begin the construction process. The team is currently looking at a location in Burton to manufacture, stage and test the rink before the Ford Field contests, however, the rink’s debut will be at Ford Field, and no one will actually play on the surface until it’s unveiled there.

Aside from putting out information on social media like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, the group has also launched a Kickstarter campaign in hopes of raising $700,000. The money will go toward materials for the rink and further development of the sport. After 14 days, the project had 25 backers and more than $23,100 in contributions.

Proceeds from the Kickstarter and the tournament will get kicked back into taking the sport to the next level.

Beal said that one of the reasons for constructing the small rink – other than to test out the materials and functionality – was because a primary revenue streams is expected to come from building and selling backyard rinks.

“The idea is that there are companies now that sell kit basketball and volleyball courts and things like that, and this would either add to or compete with those markets,” Sendo said.

“Since this is the ramp-up scenario, we have a lot of things to work out before we get to that point, and that includes scaling costs back in order to make it affordable. The prototype is expensive to build.”

Architects are still finalizing details of the rink. One detail being worked out is whether the ends – behind the goals – will be banked, allowing for additional trick skating and unique angles for the puck to travel. Beal said inline skaters have welcomed the idea, while hockey players haven’t been as receptive.

Sendo said he’s well aware of the fact that he’s taking a huge risk with the type of financial investment required to make this sport viable.

Other extreme sport leagues have fallen short of glory, he said, like the short-lived tenures of the former Philadelphia 76ers owner’s SlamBall, and WWE’s chairman Vince McMahon with his XFL football league.

“I think most of those leagues had partnership problems and it wasn’t necessarily the product. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner than Fred going into that,” he said.

But Sendo pointed to the success of a downhill sport that was recently purchased by a major company and said he could see AirBlade taking off in a similar fashion.

“I was reading a New York Times article last January about a new sport that Red Bull purchased called Crashed Ice. Then I did some research about new sports coming to market and they’re all basically hybrids of existing sports combined to create a new extreme sport,” he said.

“One of the people we were working with to secure the venue has dual citizenship in both the U.S. and in Canada and he really understood the potential of this.”

That potential, Sendo said, also landed the company the opportunity to pitch AirBlade on a future episode of ABC’s Shark Tank – a reality show allows entrepreneurs to pitch business ideas to a group of potential investors.

“This Ford Field event is really just a launching pad,” Sendo said.

“We’re planning to host several tournaments this year and if we get the awareness that we’re hoping this year we’re going to start a professional league with this next year.”