The Hidden Heroes of Hockey!

When you think of ice hockey heroes, who do you think of? Sidney Crosby? Maurice Richard? Wayne Gretzky? P.K. Subban? Hockey players have to train and practice hard. But all that practice would go to waste without ice technicians maintaining the rink.

The Science of Ice Rinks

Think about water in its three states:

• Between 0°C and 100°C, water is in its liquid state. That’s the water we use for drinking, bathing, and cooking.
• Above 100°C, water is in its gaseous state. This state is known as water vapour. We can’t actually see water in this state.
• Below 0°C, water is in its solid state. In other words, it’s ice.

Misconception Alert

Steam is made of invisible water vapour and droplets of liquid water. The water droplets are the part that make it look white and cloudy.

If you’ve ever played or watched hockey at an indoor arena, you know the arena itself isn’t necessarily below 0°C at all times. (Hockey ticket sales probably wouldn’t be as high if they were!) So how does the rink stay frozen?

Well, water itself freezes at 0°C. But if you add other substances to the water, you can change the temperature at which it freezes.

Brine, a saltwater solution or sometimes glycol, a sugar-based solution, travels through pipes under the concrete floor of ice rinks. Thanks to the salt or , the water in these pipes can remain liquid but stay cold enough to keep the ice above the concrete frozen solid. A similar process keeps outdoor rinks frozen in places like Toronto.

How do you build and maintain an ice rink?

1. Add water so that it forms a thin layer of ice on the concrete floor.
2. Paint the ice with white paint.
3. Add more layers of ice.
4. Paint team logos, lines, face-off circles and goal creases.
5. Add more layers of ice.

Did you know?

The NHL estimates that approximately 40 000 litres of water is used to make a rink.

The whole process takes about 48 hours. Now the rink is ready for the season. And who oversees this process? That unsung hero, the ice technician!

Math and Physics at the Rink

People who are responsible for the ice need to calculate the volume of the ice. Volume is the amount of space something occupies. When water freezes, it expands. In other words, it takes up more space. Has a pipe in your house ever broken in the winter? That’s probably because the water in it froze. As the ice formed, it pushed outward against the pipe, causing it to crack. Water can even break rock when it freezes!

To calculate volume, you need to know an object’s length, width and height. Ice technicians know these measurements for the ice rink. That means they can calculate the volume that the ice needs to be. Once the ice is made, ice technicians must monitor the temperature and thickness of the ice. They make sure the ice is the right volume for the rink.

How do technicians keep the ice smooth?

As skaters skate around the ice, their blades shave some of the ice off the surface of the rink. This can lead to ruts in the ice and piles of ice shavings. These imperfections in the ice surface can make it bumpy and dangerous. Ice technicians have a piece of technology specially-designed to solve this problem - the Zamboni.

A Zamboni is an ice-resurfacing machine that helps the ice technician maintain the ice once it is made. A box at the back of the Zamboni, called a conditioner, contains a blade and a pipe. First, the blade shaves a layer of ice from the surface and pushes snow shavings out of the way. Next, a pipe sprinkles warm, purified water from a tank to fill the holes and grooves made by skates. Finally, a cloth towel dragged behind the conditioner spreads the water evenly, creating a smooth layer of clean new ice on the rink. 

How do hockey players like their ice?

In general, hockey players prefer to skate on something called fast ice. Fast ice is colder, harder and smoother than slow ice. Slow ice is softer and rougher, maybe containing a bit of snow. As you can guess, you can skate a lot faster on fast ice! It’s also better for passing the puck and scoring goals. But over the course of a game, ice gradually gets softer. That’s why you see the Zamboni on the ice between periods.

So the next time you see ice technicians, remember they are hockey superstars, too!