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The quality of the ice will all rest on the shoulders of NHL ice guru Dan Craig.
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Unique challenge
for 'Ice Man'
By Shawn P. Roarke | NHL.com
November 19, 2003
Dan Craig might be the most scrutinized man in Edmonton this week. And, that is quite a feat considering that the Edmonton Eskimos are celebrating their Canadian Football League championship and Wayne Gretzky and Guy Lafleur -- two of the game's greatest players -- are scheduled to be on hand soon. But, that's what happens when you are the man in charge of building the temporary outdoor rink that will be the centerpiece of Saturday's Heritage Classic at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium. And Craig would have it no other way. Ice Facts
The Big Chill --The transformation of Commonwealth Stadium from a football field to a hockey rink a complex, 12-day process. Approximately 1,000 sheets of 3/4-inch plywood will be placed over the grass to serve as a leveling sub-floor. It will be followed by thirty-five truckloads of sand, each eight cubic yards, will be spread above the plywood, after which 800 feet of pipe will be laid over the sand and 205 tons of refrigerated brine will be pumped through the piping to help create the floor on which the ice will freeze. Preparations began Nov. 10 and some of the milestones in the process are listed below. All measures are weather permitting, as inclement weather will push them back a day. Saturday, Nov. 15 -- Start freezing sand that serves as subfloorSunday, Nov. 16 -- Flooding of the ice surfaceMonday, Nov. 17 -- Painting the iceWednesday, Nov. 19 -- Skaters take the ice for the first timeFriday, Nov. 21 -- NHL players take the ice for the first time |
Craig is the National Hockey League's facilities operations manager, but is more commonly known as the League's ice guru. Craig oversees the quality of the League's 30 ice surfaces and is the point person for any outside endeavors, like the GameONe series in Japan and the NHL Challenge series in Europe. He has built temporary rinks before, but under far less scrutiny. In Japan, he once built a hockey rink over an Olympic-sized pool. Another time, he fashioned a rink in the brand-new Saitama Super Arena, an ice surface that was hailed by the players from the Pittsburgh Penguins and Nashville Predators that played a two-game series there. Two years ago, he helped build the temporary rink for the historic outdoor game between Michigan and Michigan State held at State's Spartan Stadium. That experience has kept Craig cool as the pressure has built in the days leading up to Saturday's sold-out event, which will also be watched by millions of fans on the Hockey Night in Canada broadcast. Each step of the rink-building process has been documented in detail by the media, adding to the overall scrutiny. Through it all, Craig has done his best to provide the home-standing Edmonton Oilers and the visiting Montreal Canadiens -- not too mention the old-timers playing in the MegaStars Game on Saturday afternoon -- with NHL-quality ice under the most trying of circumstances. Ice Facts (cntd.)
Global Boarding -- Seventy rink boards and 120 plexiglass sections will be used to create the Heritage Classic rink. One thousand anchors will secure the boards to the turf. The rink system is the same one used for regular-season games played in Japan during 1997 and 1998. Being Redundant -- In addition to the main ice surface, an auxiliary ice surface measuring 130 feet by 70 feet will be constructed in Commonwealth Stadium. Pre-game entertainment will take place on this secondary rink. Backup facilities are in place for critical services such as power, flood lighting, ice making, as well as an entire backup refrigeration system. Two ice resurfacers will be used during each intermission to maintain the ice. The Doctor Is In -- NHL Facilities Operation Manager Dan Craig is overseeing the ice-making process, as he did for the Michigan-Michigan State game that was held at Spartan Stadium in October, 2001. Dubbed by the media as the NHL's "Ice Doctor," Craig is a 20-year veteran who has overseen hockey facility operations for all NHL events since 1997, as well as two Olympic Winter Games. Men At Work -- The Heritage Classic will be played on a regulation NHL ice surface measuring 200 feet by 85 feet. A crew of 100 will work approximately 150 hours to install the ice. The two-inch thick ice surface will be kept between -4° C and -8° C. Most NHL arena ice surfaces measure one-inch thick and are cooled to between -4° C and -6° C. |
What many consider a miracle of modern engineering, Craig calls his job. He says The Commonwealth Stadium ice rink a straight-forward job, in many ways related to rinks like the permanent outdoor facility at New York City's Rockerfeller Center. "It's similar to Rockefeller Center, but it's kind of a cousin to it," explains Craig, who served as the ice technician for the Oilers before joining the League several years ago. "What we had to do is right from the base, we had to do a level and sand on it because we do have a partially crowned field. Because in football, you do have to do that to run the water off. So we had to do that first. And we put a ground tarp over the top of it before we did a perimeter ring of double-three quarter inch plywood to fasten our boards to. And then we had to put in the header pipe, which is what Rockefeller has. "But those type of installations are permanent. This is definitely a temporary installation. So everything that we have done has a sand base, which is being put in as we speak, right behind me. And we are talking, you know, probably 65 truckloads of sand just to cover the piping that we have here. Because not only do we have the hockey rink itself, but we have the auxiliary area at the end of it where we will put some ice where we will have some entertainment components taking place. It's a major undertaking, the refrigeration stacks that we have here are on a skated run, which runs probably at a 200-ton capacity at any given time and we are going to have a full rate of 200 gallons per minute on that floor of calcium chloride. "So, it's basically the same as what you have in any normal installation, other than it's a sand floor compared to a concrete floor." The other difference is that it was built in less than a week, instead of a year, and will be dismantled by next week. But even that hasn't fazed the unflappable Craig, who has monitored nearly every minute of the painstaking process of laying down and perfecting the ice surface. He understands that it is all part of the business he loves.
His love for what he does comes out as he discusses bringing to life the surface at Commonwealth Stadium that will play host to history this weekend. He rattles off the details from memory, clearly enthused about each little nuance. "(With) ice making, the thing that we have on our side is timing," said Craig. "For making the ice, we made sure we have allowed ourselves enough time so that we are not going to get ourselves jammed into a corner. We are going to be patient to make ice in the best way -- the best way to make a solid layer of ice is you layer it a little bit at a time and you don't rush it.  | |
A side warm-up pond was also created for players to get loose before taking the main rink.
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"You don't go up there and dump 1,200 gallons and walk away and wait for it to freeze. We do it in small layers with a hose and a fine mist, and hour after hour, we have put together the best crew that I would ever try to assemble. "Ninety percent of the crew is my old crew from here in Edmonton. We have brought in Francois Martindale from the Bell Centre to assist. He has had good relations with us in the field in the past. So we just take our time and when we get the big machines, the Zamboni is ready to go and make sure the water is at 140 degrees, and we take it out there and we lay it down in small layers and we are ready to go." Ready is Craig's middle name. That's why he refuses to obsess over all the details that have kept the media, and fans, in a frenzy all week. Even the weather, which could wreak havoc with his masterpiece, can not affect Craig's equilibrium. "The way that we are looking at our weather forecast here right now, there is nothing that we see coming from the north or from the west that is going to impact this game on the cold side whatsoever," he said. So, as you can plainly see, while it may cool on Saturday, the Edmonton weather may have to go always to be as cool a customer as Craig.
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