IT AIN’T PRETTY
But everybody seems to love a Zamboni
Since David Ayres has cast the humble Zamboni machine driver in a heroic light, time for a closeup of the iconic ice-grooming machine that’s melded in hockey culture.
Trailing the bulky beast with its top speed of 15.6 km/h, there’s a surprising history, a lot of water under the blade. For nine decades, it has been the first on the ice every day and last off, still doing laps around everyone.
“It’s hard to believe it has been as successful as it has,” company president Richard Zamboni told the Toronto Sun in a previous interview from his office in Paramount, Calif.
Ayres went from his Zamboni machine perch at the Mattamy Centre in Toronto (old Maple Leaf Gardens) to Hockey Hall of Fame recognition in barely 28 minutes as the 43-year-old stepped in as an emergency goalie for the Carolina Hurricanes in a win over the Leafs. He joined Wayne Gretzky, Sidney Crosby, NASCAR’s Richard Petty and Peanuts characters Snoopy and Woodstock as instantly famous drivers.
Steven Galyean, who steers for the Carolina Thunderbirds of the Federal League, tried to convey the contraption’s unusual romance for spectators.
“It’s something being driven on the ice, a machine on wheels, it’s just something different,” he told journalnow.com. “It’s got a weird name. Every kid loves the Zamboni, even the big kids. The truth is everybody wants to drive it.”
The 55-year-old Galyean was a teenage rink rat in Winston-Salem, N.C., who loved to show off his speed skating skills to the detriment of arena safety rules. Until the rink manager gave him a job application to drive one saying: “This should slow you down.”
Dubbing himself ‘Zam Man’ with his crowd-pleasing antics while at the wheel, he whips up the game-night fervour for the prospect league team, throwing T-shirts.
“I fall in love with it every time I get on,” Galyean insisted.
Today at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, there are five drivers for its two machines and five other support staff, but only two or three get the coveted game-night pilot’s seat.
Papa Zamboni was Richard’s dad, Frank, who was recently inducted to the U.S. Inventors Hall of Fame. Frank grew up part of the family garage business with two brothers in the 1920s, specializing in refrigeration units for the dairy and produce industry. With their ice-making expertise, the Zambonis scored big when figure skating became a popular adolescent pastime in the late ’30s. They constructed an outdoor rink in Paramount big enough to accommodate 800 customers and without a dome for a time.
But long before the Kings, Ducks and Sharks began NHL play, the challenge to keep ice from becoming slush in the California heat had Frank spending plenty of time in his shop. Manual grooming with a water tank pulled by a crew of three or four was both cumbersome and time-consuming.
So, in 1942, Frank bought a tractor and began testing a machine to shave the ice, flood the surface and collect chips and snow in an elevated tank. When he disconnected the rear-axle steering it could pivot around the corner boards.
Converting his creation to four-wheel drive in 1949, he filed U.S. patent No. 93,478, the Model A Zamboni. Not only were recreational skaters happy, Olympic champion figure skater Sonja Henie was so impressed with the machines when her show came through Paramount, she bought two for her tour.
Frank built 13 more with successive improvements that soon went to rinks throughout the continent.
March 10 of this year marked the 65th anniversary of its debut in a Canadian NHL rink, at the Montreal Forum in a game between the Canadiens and Leafs.
Any other night, the noisy arrival of a smoke-belching monster with a rotating chain on top would be news, but not at the midst of the Habs-Leafs rivalry. Angry over what they saw as game-delay tactics by the hated visitors in an eventual 0-0 tie, fans threw garbage on the ice, reportedly including pigs hoofs.
Events leading to the Maurice Richard riot in town that week pushed the new machine further from the headlines.
The Boston Garden had received its machine three months earlier and Laval, Que., was the first community rink in Canada to take delivery.
More than 12,000 have since been purchased worldwide, thanks in part to the NHL doubling its order in the early 1990s so two per building could cut resurfacing time from 15 minutes to eight. Machines now appear all the way down to the tip of South America in the Cerro Castor rink in Tierra del Fuego.
The most travelled are a pair that originated in an arena in the Boston suburb of Tyngsborough, one winding up in New Zealand, the other in Barrow, Alaska, inside the Arctic Circle.
In 1999, Gretzky’s last season, the NHL declared his fellow Brantford native Jimmy MacNeill ‘Zamboni Driver Of The Year,’ letting him take a celebratory lap at the all-star game in Toronto. A million people voted for their favourites on the Zamboni company site that winter.
“Everybody looks at you and thinks that this is such an easy job,” MacNeil said at the time. “Driving is a little bit of science, an art. You have levers, you have buttons.”
And you’ll always have at least one cleaning critic in the crowd.
“I can almost guarantee there isn’t one driver that hasn’t come off the ice and had some hockey fan or figure skating fan say: ‘You missed a spot.’”
Zamboni machines have an estimated NHL lifespan of 17,520 hours (the company’s preferred measurement to miles, equalling about two years), though some teams opt to replace theirs less frequently. The two at Scotiabank Arena cost about $140,000 total and have a water distribution system called Fast Ice, promoting the removal of air molecules to help reduce freeze time.
“Well-maintained machines can operate efficiently for many years,” said Paula Coony, brand manager for the company.
“There are machines at work that are decades old. The needs of each arena operation vary.”
New technology in just the past couple of years included sensors in and around the machine to feed a custom web mobile app, monitoring consumption of water and power. A laser-guided levelling system automates blade control to create a consistent sheet of ice at a lower thickness, further saving money, energy and water. Lithium batteries and electric power allow for quick charging capabilities for busy arenas seeking emission-free equipment.
“People will always want to go faster and develop skates and better arenas,” Richard Zamboni said. “We’ll have to keep up with those changes.”
It’s just something different ... It’s got a weird name. Every kid loves the Zamboni, even the big kids. The truth is everybody wants to drive it.