Cold permeated outside Air Canada Centre last night, and it permeated — conspicuously — inside: I was lodged within five significant layers of clothing, and at no time did I feel warm. Neither did Brent Johnson.
“It was cold in the building, before the game I was freezing,” he said in the Capitals’ post-game locker room.
How novel: cold in a hockey arena. And: consequently, a terrific sheet of ice.
And it wasn’t just out-of-towners from the South who were all layered up; the home crowd, like me, was watching hockey all bundled up: men and women, young boys and girls, scarfs and touques adorning the spectators in row after row, like ornaments on a Christmas tree. And in breaks in play the Air Canada Centre maintenance staff would swoop out onto the ice with enormous shovels to collect a half a zone’s worth of powdery snow from the surface.
“You can always tell the good ice — you see the snow is lighter when they’re shoveling it up,” BJ added. “It’s very powdery.”
Karl Alzner noticed the big change in the ACC’s ice quality from the team’s Saturday morning skate to the conditions at game time. On Friday night, Hillary Duff played a concert at Air Canada Centre. At the visitor’s Saturday morning skate, Alzner said, the puck was “bouncing all over the place.” Apparently, though, the Maple Leafs went to some lengths to get a quality sheet for the evening. Either they opened all of the buildings windows and doors and left them wide open throughout the afternoon or they turned the ACC’s thermostat down to about 45. I said to Pepper midway through the first period, “There’s no way it’s 55 degrees in here,” and he agreed.
At Saturday’s morning skate, Alzner noted, “we had to snap the puck, we really had to put a lot on it. But tonight the puck didn’t jump up on us.”
The Caps’ passing was crisp throughout the evening, conspicuously sharp, hard, and accurate. Despite yet another depleted lineup the Caps’ power play puck movement had polish, and their cohesion skating five-on-five stood out. Bruce Boudreau put in place a terrific gameplan, and he had 20 guys excited to play on a Saturday night in a hockey cathedral. But take note: hockey cathedrals tend to feel like refrigerators.
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Fortunately, new media offers the opportunity to report on critical issues such as the ice quality at our home diggs. Clearly the team has found a way to cope with the situation, but its just as clear that bad ice at Verizon is a taboo subject in the organization. It’s kinda like the elephant in the room that’s just really hard to ignore.
Stratocaps:
There is no elephant in the room…Ted says so. Take a listen to the following, which was on XM204 on 12/1:
http://nhlhomeice.com/wp/?p=1020
Repeat after me: the VC ice is no worse (if average is defined as being middle of the pack) than any other rink in the league. There is no relationship between the VC’s ice quality and player’s injuries. So sayeth Ted. You guys are just a bunch of whiners.
wilbur
Salut!
The ACC is always freezing. It has nothing to do with the weather outside. I went to a preseason game there in September and it was soooo cold inside!
Plus I remember reading that the ACC spent a couple million dollars in the summer on a new system to make the ice better.
Wilbur: First, thanks for the link. Second, enough players — both Capitals and non-Caps — have complained about the VC ice that I believe ‘em.
I’d be very curious to see the full report and where the VC ice ranks. Plus, since when is “average” acceptable? Regardless, it’s pretty clear that the phone booth’s ice is not very hockey-friendly . . . perhaps not for a lack of trying, but for a lack of funds and arena control. I have high hopes that Leonsis will address the issue (and it is one) when he eventually buys the VC from Pollin’s estate.
We sit in Sec. 119 and notice that there is a guy who seemingly measures the ice temperature before each game. We see him put his measuring device down after the beginning of each game. Sometimes he measures the temperature again during the game, but it isn’t a constant. We also see all of the slush that they take off the ice after the Zambonis do their thing, and it’s a lot of slush.
I just think it isn’t cold enough in the rink – if I’m comfortable in a t-shirt and a light jacket, that’s not good. We see where the ice guy puts his measurement device and wonder if we can check it out — oh, yes, we harbor thoughts of insurrectionists! What drives us crazy is that you can see when the ice is bad and how the puck bounces badly, not to mention possible injuries that can occur. We’re thinking about it and we’re thinking about how we can take our own measurements. Oh, yes, we’re busy in Sec. 119….more information if we figure out how to do it. We could be smarter squirrels, or maybe not!
So, about 10 years ago, I had the pleasure of playing at what was then the MCI Center. There are 2 things I always remember about skating there as a young college freshmen. The first, an NHL visiting team’s dressing room is better than any locker/dressing room I will ever be in again. The second, the ice absolutely sucked. It was very soft. It was very difficult to find your edges and keep the puck from bouncing. The only caveat here is that we played before the Caps played Toronto (what a coincidence) that evening. Maybe they didn’t crank the A/C and dehumidifiers up until later? Who knows.
This was compared to the ice we normally practiced and played regular games on at the Gardens Ice House in Laurel. The difference between the rinks obviously was that at MCI you took your jacket off when you got there. At Laurel, you left your jacket on and also made sure you had gloves and a hat to watch the games.
I still remember one game early in the season, when icing wasn’t called toward the end of the periods because you could actually watch the puck slow down as it scooted down the ice. And have you seen how much snow the ice kids shovel up? That is a serious metric asstonne of snow getting shoveled up…what? Three times each period?
I was at the game, and it was COLD in the ACC. Nevertheless, the Caps 2-1 win kept me warm!
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