NHL ready to turn TD Place into an outdoor rink
To borrow a line from Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come.
While the people of Ottawa are still recovering from their Grey Cup hangovers after the Toronto Argonauts knocked off the Calgary Stampeders in a thriller Sunday night at TD Place, there will be no rest for the weary as the work gets under way this weekend for the NHL 100 Classic between the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens.
Not long after the cleanup from the Grey Cup festivities at Lansdowne Park is completed this week, officials from the NHL will move in Sunday to start the work in earnest on the outdoor rink the Senators will call home against the Habs on Saturday, Dec. 16th to celebrate the league’s Centennial birthday.
The Senators and Canadiens, two of the first franchises in the NHL when it was formed in November, 1917, played the first game in league history on Dec. 19, 1917 at Dey’s Arena with 6,000 fans. That night, Joe Malone scored five goals in Montreal’s 7-4 victory over Ottawa to begin a new chapter in hockey history.
That’s why this event will be special and the work will officially get under way when the NHL’s event truck rolls onto the grounds Sunday with all the equipment necessary to build an outdoor rink. Yes, the league has done a lot of these outdoor games over the years, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less special.
Yes, the stands are already built to expand TD Place to 36,000 fans for the game between the Senators and the Habs, but that doesn’t mean there will be any less work for the people put in place to build the rink.
“It’s a typical setup for us, specifically with the rink build, and it’s going to be the typical build,” said Derek King, the NHL’s senior manager of facility operations, this week from his Winnipeg home. “With the seating in place, it’s going to be easier for other groups involved, but for us it’s the same setup.
“Everything should go smooth. That’s what we’re hoping for.”
King, who also assists in the ice making at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg, said the crew won’t waste any time getting to work. There will be 16 people assigned to making sure the ice is just right for the Senators and Habs.
Those people will literally work day and night to make sure the conditions are about as perfect as they can be.
“We’ll definitely start work when the truck arrives,” King said. “We’ll start doing all of our pipe run (from the truck) on Monday and that’ s when we’ll start putting our stuff in.
“By Tuesday, you’ll see the flooring going. On Wednesday, it’ll start to look like a rink because the boards will go up.
“If all goes according to my plan by Wednesday night or Thursday morning we’ll start making ice. From Dec. 7th until the late evening on Dec. 14th we’ll be making ice.”
Both teams are scheduled to practice on the rink Friday, Dec. 15th plus there will be a media skate and family skate for the two teams involved so that’s the timetable that King is working on.
This isn’t anything like the outdoor rink in your neighborhood where somebody shows up with a hose and hopes we get cold weather so it freezes perfectly. This is a time-consuming and complicated operation. This is King ’s 11th outdoor game and he constructed his first rink in Calgary in 2011 for the Heritage Classic.
“Our schedule is key,” King said. “We’ve done it so many times we follow the same schedule but every once in a while you’ll have a little hiccup.
“Obviously, outdoor games you’re going to have to deal with the weather so we don’t really have a buffer in there — so to speak — if we get some bad weather days. As long as our build goes good, we don’t really have any equipment issues or delays with stuff getting on site, I anticipate things to be on schedule.”
Of course, everybody loved to watch the snow falling at Lansdowne for Sunday’s Grey Cup, but those aren’t conditions King wants in the next 10 days or so.