St. Louis Blues: Fans Know Nothing About Ice Repair

St. Louis Blues fans watch the game, admire the skill and marvel at the ability to keep balance on ice. However, few of us truly know how they keep the ice.

I, like most people who read this space, have been a St. Louis Blues fan for as long as I can remember. I’ve been a fan of the NHL, overall, since the early 1990’s when the Pittsburgh Penguins won back-to-back Stanley Cups, conveniently beating Chicago for one, and Patrick Roy won the last Stanley Cup for a Canadian team in 1993.

However, for as long as I’ve loved the sport and followed hockey, I never gave the ice much thought. You just see the Zamboni machine, or in some cases Olympia, go out on the rink and voila, you have clean ice.

The truth is, whether you’ve been involved with hockey for a few years or an entire lifetime, few of us truly know how much work goes into the ice. Like soccer, football or baseball players probably don’t know how much work goes into maintaining their fields, few of us really know how the Blues and all NHL rinks keep their ice going.

For the uber-novice, you might think you just put some water down, let it freeze and you’re good to go for most a season. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Fortunately, Tom Timmerman of the Post-Dispatch and STLToday put together a fantastic piece detailing the day in the life of the Enterprise Center’s rink manager. I fully suggest you read it, as it goes into great detail.

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As mentioned, I had very rudimentary knowledge of how a rink was made. I knew they basically had to put it down in layers, instead of simply flooding the entire rink.

I also knew that the paint on the lines went down and then more water was added. When I was younger, I used to think they actually painted it all on the ice surface, so it seemed strange the blue or red paint was not scratched up with all the skates going over it.

However, what actually happens is more detailed. The lines are painted on, as they always have been. Now days, the advertisements and logos for special occasions, such as a retirement etc., are actually mesh fabric laid down and then covered with layers of ice.

Another interesting thing portrayed was the ice will actually be different thicknesses in different parts of the rink. It makes sense if you think about it. Just the same as the middle of the football field or the goal boxes in soccer get worn down more than other parts, certain areas of the ice will wear more than others.

In the STLToday article, after one particular game, the ice by the penalty boxes was a quarter-inch thinner than what the rest of the rink is kept at. There are some times where it gets as low as 7/8 of an inch before they can fix it.

I’ve seen the ice crew use turkey basters for the holes where the net goes into. What I did not know is the baster is used to suck and blow – sorry for the verbage. The crew will use hot water in the baster to clear out any shavings that have begun to freeze in the holes (sometimes they have to use drills too), and then use the same baster to suck out the water and sludge.

Another fascinating part of this process is the fact they use water that is the complete opposite of what you would expect. When all we hear about is soft ice and needing to keep the rink cold, we would not possibly imagine that the water they put down is actually over 100 degrees.

Apparently, more worrying than the ice being soft is it being too hard. If the ice becomes too cold, it will become brittle and possibly crack.

On the flip side of that, the ice technicians have a secret weapon in bubble gum remover. Instead of needing it to remove some careless fan’s leftover from the bottom of a seat, the bubble gum remover acts as a quick-freeze agent if a certain repair job is not adhering with only snow and water smoothed by a puck.

There is even more to all of it than I went into here. It really is an amazing process.

For the crew that takes care of it, it might be just another day at the office. For those of us with no experience in ice repair, it really is something we know nothing about.

Most of us just see the resurfacer out there and think it’s as simple as adding more water. Again, that’s not true at all.

“We try not to lay a lot of water in the morning unless we absolutely have to,” Jim Schmuke told Tom Timmermann in the STLToday article, “because it tends to make a little more snow the more water you lay out there. So we try not to until its needed to resurface.”

Next. Blues Get Techie With New AR Experience. dark

As outsiders, we like to think it’s all easy. Any of us could mow grass or drive a vehicle that lays down water (and apparently has no brakes).

The truth is anyone can learn the skills, but like anything, it takes a lot of practice and knowledge to be good at it. The truth is, we don’t know even half of what goes into it. This article has changed some of that.

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