Hockey is one of the hottest sports at Norwich; the coolest component of the sport is the ice.
At 200 feet long and 90 feet wide, the ice rink on campus is larger than most universities’ ice rinks, according to the supervisor of ice rink operations.
“Most rinks are only 85 feet wide but we wanted a bigger surface,” said Frederick Coan, supervisor of ice rink operations. “It makes for a more interesting game, more skating, less checking type of thing.”
While the size of the rink is impressive, the labor that goes into making and maintaining the ice can be daunting. “It’s a lot of fun, a lot of hard work,” said Coan.
According to Coan, it takes five days just to install the ice and get it thick enough to survive all the hard skate cuts at the beginning of the season.
This year, the ice was put in a little later, right after the homecoming celebration, part of which was the big Partridge Society luncheon.
“We had to wait until after homecoming,” said Coan. “They had the big Partridge Society luncheon for the alumni right on the arena floor.”
“On Sunday I spent the day scrubbing and cleaning it, getting the butter and salad dressing off the floor,” said Coan. “During the same time the refrigeration was turned on and then on Monday morning we started making the ice.”
The lengthy process begins by turning on four compressors, which run for 24 hours to lower the temperature of the cement floor. There are pipes running underneath the floor that aid in the cooling and are kept from freezing by “a salt and brine solution,” according to Coan.
Coan also noted that making the ice is expensive.
“Energy-wise it is not a cheap operation, between the electricity to run the refrigeration and steam to heat the water,” Coan said.
Michael Ricker, the supervisor of utilities services at Norwich, estimates that during the summer “it costs between $20 and $25 an hour in energy use.”
“During the winter time is about $5 less in cost, because we don’t have to counteract for the extra heat,” said Ricker.
According to Coan, the ice is up and running in the arena for five months and is taken out in March after the last varsity game. The ice is re-installed in the middle of June for a hockey camp in July, which is hosted by the Norwich.
Once the hockey season begins, the temperature drops outside of Kreitzberg’s walls and inside the cavernous building.
“When we put the ice in, we like the floor to be between 15 and 16 degrees,” Coan said. “Then we go out with a hose and a spray-boom that has little nozzles, which puts out a fine mist.”
Coan pointed out that the purpose of the spray-boom is to create “thin, smooth layers of ice.” If the water were to be sprayed directly onto the floor with the hose, the ice would have “waves.”
The boom, which measures 10 to 11 feet wide, is pulled by Coan, while other people hold the larger hose, from which the hot water comes through.
Coan explains the process further: “I go out there and walk backwards pulling the boom with me, there’s another five to six people moving the hose.” Coan pulls the hose backwards as he walks around the cement floor.
“I figure the first day with all the sprays that we do, I probably walk backwards about seven miles,” said Coan. After all is said and done, the ice is a cool 1¼ inch thick.
According to Daniel Booth, a Kreitzberg Arena maintenance worker, “if you don’t have a lot of people holding the hose, it will melt right into the ice,” and that “you need bodies to move the hose around.”
Players from the men’s and women’s hockey team helped with the first steps of making the ice, according to Booth.
As for the painting of the ice, the process is lengthy and a labor of love.
Once the initial layers of ice have frozen to the right thickness, a specialized white paint is mixed in a large bin and pumped through the hose and spray boom, according to Coan. Four coats of the white paint are applied to the ice, “a couple (coats) up and down, a couple (coats) across.”
After the paint is applied, it is sealed with “eight or 10 coats of water” and then the ice is ready for the logos, lines and circles to be painted on. Painting the circles, lines and logos on the ice is a more detailed and exact undertaking.
The center-ice logo is 30 feet in diameter and its stencil arrives in five panels, according to Coan. The stencils are ordered through a company from Canada and are printed on brown paper with “pinholes” punched through the paper.
“We take blue chalk dust and put it on a mop-thing, it’s called pouncing,” said Coan. “You rub it against the brown paper and (the chalk) goes through the hole.”
Once the chalk goes through the holes, the paper is carefully removed, revealing the outline of the logo. According to Coan, “It usually takes a couple of hours just to get that set in chalk, before we can do anything with it, painting wise.”
“The center-ice logo and the center-ice line took a total of 56 man-hours,” according to Steven Clough, the Kreitzberg Arena assistant manager. “That was seven people working eight hours,” he said.
According to Clough, the logos on the ice are mostly painted by hand, with environmentally friendly, water-based paint and stencils. The paint itself is “specially designed” for colder temperatures.
Clough pointed out that when it comes to the painting of logos, it has to be continuous.
“If you stop painting, if you stop with your brush for a second, it’s going to freeze to the ice and leave a big blob,” said Clough, “so you just have to keep going and have faith.”
To erase any mistakes made when painting the logos, Clough said a razor is used to scrape carefully over the ice. He points out that possible mistake on the logos are the main reason why extra layers of ice are placed on the white paint; otherwise they “would be scraping right through the white paint.”
After the paint job is done, the ice needs to be sealed further with the boom-spray; the ice is later “flooded” with the larger hose. The process takes 12 to 15 hours; once the paint is protected by a quarter inch of ice, the ice is resurfaced with the Olympia machine, according to Coan.
“So then we go out there with the Olympia machine,” Coan said, “we go over the ice at 40 times with the machine to build up the ice to an inch and a quarter.”
Resurfacing the ice after it has been painted takes a day and a half, according to Coan.
According to Booth, once the painting of logos, lines and circles are done, the ice is built up to 1½ inches high. Once a week throughout the season, the ice is shaved down to less than an inch and then built back up with water to just over an inch, to keep the ice clearer and the paint colors bright.
After the teams are through with practice, the ice usually takes a beating. Once practice is over the ice is “cut down” an inch to brighten the colors on the ice and later brought back up to an inch and quarter right before a game.
The most recognizable piece of machinery on the ice is what most people refer to as the “Zamboni.”
The Zamboni Company was founded by Frank Zamboni, and was the pioneer in ice-resurfacing equipments.
According to Clough, the ice resurfacer used by Norwich is called an Olympia, made by a Canadian company. The Olympia performs the same tasks as a Zamboni; “It does the same thing, but with a different name,” Clough said.
“This was an $80,000 machine three years ago,” said Clough “and now I believe it costs close to a $100,000.” According to Clough the Olympia weighs 8,000 pounds and holds 210 gallons of water in its tank.
The Olympia is also wider than a Zamboni, which, according to Coan, “fits our rink better” and helps it get around the rink quickly. While a special license is not necessary to operate the Olympia, it does take some time and training to be able to operate the machine.
“You have to get used to driving (the Olympia), it’s hard with the machine,” said Coan. Due to poor visibility over the front end, the driver needs to develop a feel for the machine and all of its various functions.
For a first-time driver, the Olympia poses a few challenges.
“The first few times you either go too far before you turn or you make the turn too soon and miss some spots in the ice,” said Coan.
The Olympia has an 8-foot-wide razor that shaves the ice, a pipe from where water is dispensed and smoothed over by “a rag” onto the ice. This process helps fill “the cuts” left by the skates of the players, according to Coan.
“One thing I’ve learned is that you can make bad ice,” Booth said. The players are the first to detect it “and they tell you and know that it’s bad ice!” Booth said.
According to Booth, hot water has a tighter bond to the ice, if you do it with cold water, you have a brittle ice and you can see it when a larger chip will blow away.
“So hot water or warm water is much better for your ice,” Booth said.
During hockey games, driving the Olympia may look like a relaxing drive around the ice, but it is not.
“You are kind of under the crunch,” Clough said, “2000 people sitting in the arena all watching you, you try to make sure you don’t miss any spots and yet get done in a timely manner.”