| Written by Justin Rice |
| Friday, December 11, 2009 05:41 |
| BOSTON — Turns out there is not much difference between building and maintaining an NHL hockey rink inside a baseball stadium and a hockey dad’s backyard rink. In both instances, round-the-clock care is required along with boatloads of patience. In the NHL’s case, however, boatloads of water are also required. “This crew was handpicked and they have passion,” Dan Craig said of his 200-man crew building the rink in Fenway Park for the 2010 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic on New Year’s Day. “They can make ice at any time like you would with your son, like I did with my son. “There is nothing more peaceful than being out spraying at 3 a.m., when you know the best players in the world are going to play on it.” The third annual event will be played this year between the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers at 1 p.m. on Jan. 1 — leaving Craig and his team plenty of time to stretch the 200-by-85-foot ice surface from Fenway’s first base to third base — in the shadow of the famed Green Monster. “We’re taking our time,” said Craig, the NHL’s ice guru who is known as the Ice Man. “Patience is one of things that is number one on our list. We tell the guys when we get up in the morning we don’t rush through anything, we don’t go out there and lay down 1,000 gallons of water, turn around and go get a coffee. “They’re on the hoses constantly for 16 hours, just spraying back and forth for 16 hours in a given day.” On Thursday the NHL began the process of placing the rink in Fenway by parking its 53-foot long Winter Classic refrigeration truck next to the ballpark on Van Nes Street, where it will stay up till and throughout the game. “It’s fabulous,” said Craig, whose official title with the league is facilities operations manager, after getting out of the truck. “You look up here and it gives you chills. Just to be within the walls [of Fenway], never mind bring a rink [to] it.” Containing 300 tons of equipment, the truck will pump more than 1,000 gallons of coolant per minute to keep the ice cold and solid. “This system is monster, we haven’t even pushed its limits,” Craig said on a partly cloudy, blustery 47-degree day. “On a day like today this thing wouldn’t even hiccup. This is our second season [with it] and we don’t foresee any problems. “It’s like going out for jog, it’s always nice to have good weather but when you go out for a jog and it’s raining you still get up and go.” Nevertheless, in the event of rain or a blizzard, the league has a built-in makeup date of Jan. 2. Craig, who has been in the ice-making business for more than 30 years, said his crew will not start making ice until the middle of next week. A full, firm sheet will be in place by the end of next week. They will not even start the ice-making process until Wednesday. In the meantime Craig’s 200-person team started laying down panels on the lawn so the rink does not to damage the field. “We’re coming in here from the National Hockey League and we’re showing this grand stadium, this grand ball park the utmost respect,” Craig said. “The same as I would expect anyone if they came into our NHL facilities to do. That’s why we’re working with the grounds crew, we’re working very closely with them to make sure everything is taken care of so when we leave it’s like we were never here. That’s how we like to leave it.” This is not the first time the NHL is working in a baseball stadium. While the first Winter Classic was in Ralph Wilson Stadium in Buffalo, where the NFL’s Bills play, last year’s was at Chicago’s Wrigley Field. Don Renzulli, the league’s senior vice president of events and entertainment, said they learned a lot from last year. Wrigley Field’s concourses were packed during intermissions so the NHL has asked the city if the Red Sox if they can keep Yawkey Way closed off to pedestrians and open to fans attending the game. “What you have during a baseball game is 17 or 18 breaks where people go to the bathroom, get there concessions,” he said. “Here you have two 20 minute breaks. And what we learned last year is the concourses were just body to body so [Yawkey] helps us expand. “Each year we learn more with these stadiums.” The NHL has also expanded the events in the run up to and after the Winter Classic as there will be public skating, an alumni game and college hockey games at Fenway. There will also be a Spectator’s Plaza starting Dec. 31 located next to Boston Beer Works, in the parking lot diagonally across Brookline Avenue from the Red Sox ticket office. As for tickets to the this year’s Winter Classic, Renzulli said 310,000 fans tried to get tickets when they went on sale, up from 241,000 people looking for tickets last year, which attracted the largest broadcast audience for a regular-season NHL game in 34 years. Only 38,000-plus fans can fit into Fenway on game day. “So the demand is there, people want to see it,” Renzulli said, noting that New Year’s Day is no longer a college football bonanza because the best bowl games are no longer played on Jan. 1. “It’s something that college football has kind of left us open a window and we took it and people want to see it.” |
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