Zamboni incident, Pittsburgh-NYR, 3/21/99

[William D Sands]

I posted this previously, and someone made the suggestion that
I explain what I was talking about for those who didn't see
it. Here's a quick rundown, and the original post is below.
One of the Zambonis was going too fast and went out of control,
cartwheeled a few times, and bounced over the glass and killed
a bunch of people in the garden. No, what happened was:
During the resurfacing of the ice between the 1st and second
periods, a Zamboni dug a groove up and down the ice, 5 or 6
lengths I'm guessing, and the groove looked to be maybe an inch
wide and 1/2 deep, but that's a complete guess. Anyhow, this
obviously had the potential to tear ankles and knees, not to
mention a lot of players falling down, so they had to remedy
it. First, they had all the players line up and down the ice
and scrape up ice to fill in the grooves, which looked pretty
funny in the first place. Then most of the players went back
to their locker rooms, and guys with squeegees went out
and tried to pack the ice into the grooves, then another
Zamboni came out and ran over the repaired ice. The
intermission was maybe 20-30 minutes longer than normal, and
they seemed to do a pretty good job, since I didn't notice
anything different about the play in the rest of the game
(although I'm still trying to figure out how to blame Jagr's
failure to score on a breakaway in OT on the ice problems).

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Orig. post:
About the Zamboni problems during the 1st intermission of the
Penguins-Rangers 2-2 tie yesterday - was it curious that nobody
noticed during the resurfacing that there was a problem? I am
not sure how they do it in MSG, using one machine or two, but
in either case you'd think that either the lone driver or one
of the two would have noticed something amiss.
Something not mentioned by anyone doing the broadcast, and I
guess for good reason. One of the Zambonis they had out there
was painted up to look like an Amtrak train. Really.
-Bill S.

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[Steven S. Scheer]

Thanks for the explanation. What defies explanation is that somebody didn't
notice this as it was happening. Like the driver. Or the folks who move
the nets out of the way. Or one of the various officials standing around.
Or a few dozen fans. Weird story. I feel sorry for anyone sitting around
listening to the game on a radio, with no visual clues as to when the game
might be resumed.

-SSS

William D Sands <san...@pitt.edu> wrote in message
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