An ode to hockey’s underappreciated, oft-overlooked kings of the deep freeze
By Katie Pelech
Photograph by Peter Newcomb
This April, as you watch burly hockey players glide smoothly over the ice (and brutally smash each other’s faces into it) during the NCAA Men’s Hockey Championship at Scottrade Center, pause to appreciate the guys who made it all possible—not the players, not the coaches, not the St. Louis Sports Commission (although the commission does get props for bringing a ton of tourneys here over the last six years). No, you should be tipping your hat to Scottrade’s ice team, led by head ice technician and foreman David Grimes. They’re the guys willing to work ceaselessly through the night, pulling up hardwood and applying countless layers of water to a chilly expanse of concrete. For the love of the game? Nah—for the love of the ice.
Proper ice care is an art, but somewhere along the way we forgot to notice. Maybe it’s that annoyingly condescending Zamboni song, the goofy antics of teenagers in oversized costumes (“There are stories about mascots, um, getting in the way,” Grimes euphemizes) or simply the stark contrast of the endless revolutions of a lumbering machine to hockey’s brash thrill, but people just don’t give the ice and its tenders the reverence they deserve.
It’s about time we did. Grimes learned to pilot an ice resurfacer before he got his driver’s license, he’s been here for 20 years and he was chosen to work at the 2002 Olympic hockey games. If you knew what he and his crew know, you might appreciate them a little more.
First, there’s the difference between a Zamboni and an Olympia, which Grimes’ team uses. (The former has a hyperstatic transmission, the latter a regular transmission.) There’s the time it takes to put down ice (two days, but Grimes’ crew can work through the night to do it in one). There’s the Olympia’s inner workings (an 84-inch-long, 8-inch-wide blade shaves the ice, which is then moved by an auger back into 150-gallon tanks, which lay down water to make new ice). And then there’s what those girls with the figure skates and shovels actually do. (“They’re mandated by the league,” Grimes explains. “Snow builds up.”)
So given all that, you’ll forgive the guy if he sometimes thinks he can get away with anything. “If it’s a dark night and there’s nothing going on,” Grimes says, chuckling, “I might get out there and get a couple shots off, shoot the puck around.” The iceman cometh.
