> Anyone else >have any Zamboni accident stories? > >Andrew Coll [log in to unmask] > [log in to unmask] In response to Andrew's request for Zamboni accident stories, I would like to offer the following slightly-edited version of an article I wrote that first appeared in the Ithaca Times on February 2, 1984. In the intervening 6 1/2 seasons, I still haven't come across anything to compare with the mess described in this article. ******************** I have seen a lot of strange and wondrous things in my hockey travels these last seventeen or so years. I have seen a game in which the referee and linesmen wore gloves because the temperature in the rink was 26 below zero, cold enough to freeze two cases of beer in the dressing room. I have seen a substitute referee come out of the stands to replace an injured colleague and work the game wearing red sweat pants and rental skates. I have broken up a dressing room shoving match between Laing Kennedy, then coach of the Ithaca Stars, and the fat, swinish general manager of a collection of goons and thugs called the Copper City Chiefs. I have seen Sue Dolan's fuzzy purple slippers. But I have never seen anything quite so bizarre as last Saturday's game in Providence's Meehan Auditorium between Cornell and the host Brown Bruins. This game may have set collegiate hockey back fifteen years. It featured: a broken Zamboni machine; a tow truck; a second Zamboni, a wheezing old relic with no brakes that had to be taken off for repairs twice; a janitor pressd into service as driver of said Zamboni; a linesman blockading the Cornell bench; two trash barrels full of water; and the usual inept officiating that has unfortunately become the norm in ECAC hockey. It started almost an hour late, and ended after midnight the only way, really, that it could have, with a flukey goal that, as it floated into the Cornell net, may have drawn the curtain on the Red's Ivy League title hopes. When the team arrived at the rink, strange things were obviously about to happen. Brown's Zamboni, the machine that cleans and resurfaces the ice, was parked, very dead, directly in front of the Cornell bench. Not to worry, said the Brown rink management. We will simply tow it off, then use the backup Zamboni for the game, which will be delayed just a few minutes. Shortly a tow truck appeared, backed onto the ice, and took the stricken vehicle away. Enter the backup Zamboni, a gasping, clunking wreck that had been original equipment when Meehan Auditorium was dedicated in 1962, but which had not been used in about ten years. The machine was being driven by a janitor, the backup Zamboni driver, as (so the story was related to me) the regular driver works Saturday nights at a restaurant that he owns and is not available for driving those nights. One trip around the ice convinced any remaining doubters that this would indeed be a long night. The machine was neither picking up the old ice nor putting down a new surface. Not to worry, said the Brown rink management. We will simply replace the hoses, and the game will be delayed just a few minutes. Eventually, hoses patched, the janitor and the backup Zamboni reappeared, and wheezed and clunked and skidded around the rink, laying down a good enough ice surface for the pre-game warmup to begin. Miraculously, nothing went wrong between the warmup and the start of the first period, and finally, 55 minutes late, we were ready for hockey. Cornell sandwiched goals by Terry Gage and Geoff Dervin around a score by Brown's Ed Pizzo to take a 2-1 lead into the final minute of the period. Then, with the Red killing off the last of three straight penalties called against them by referee Richard Burrell, Brown's Tim O'Connor put a rebound behind goalie Jim Edmands. Cornell argued that Brown had a man in the crease, but Burrell denied it. Burrell was wrong--a videotape replay clearly showed Bob Jones skating into the crease before the puck, unchecked by a defender. At the end of the period, a linesman blocked Cornell's players from leaving their bench until Brown's team had departed. The benches at Meehan are side by side, and the players enter and leave through a common walkway. Coach Lou Reycroft took exception to the linesman's unannounced action and shoved him, earning a bench penalty. Then it was time for Brown's band to delay things further with a ten-minute skating "show", indefensible in light of the long delay in starting the game. Finally, the janitor and the backup Zamboni appeared, wheezed and chugged and skidded their way around the rink, and we were ready for period two. The second period was a dull, scoreless, sloppily-played affair that might just be the worst period of hockey I have ever seen. It was a perfect lead-in to the events that followed. The janitor and the backup Zamboni reappeared, slammed into the end boards, and clunked and gasped their way around the rink for what we thought would be the last time. Then the blade on the Zamboni broke and gouged a hole in the ice that stretched from the penalty box halfway to the Cornell goal. The Cornell players complained to Burrell that the trench made the ice unsafe. Burrell, in a rare lucid moment, agreed. First he and the linesmen, asissted by some of the players, tried to fill in the hole by scraping ice into it with their skates. That didn't work. Not to worry, said the Brown rink management. We will simply fill it in with the machine we use to keep the ice from building up along the boards. That didn't work. Not to worry, said the Brown rink management. We will simply fill it in with ice scraped up by the Zamboni. The ancient beast hadn't scraped up enough ice all night to chill a six-pack, so this effort was doomed as well. Finally, a new plan of attack was proposed. We will empty two trash cans full of water on the ice, said the Brown rink management. Then, while the officials skate around aimlessly in the puddle and the players sit around in the dressing rooms in their underwear, we will change the blade on the Zamboni. Then we will have the janitor drive the Zamboni around and around until the ice is something vaguely resembling flat. This finally worked, although by the time the major surgery was complete, the ice scraped, the teams warmed up and the game ready to resume, the twelve-minute intermission had stretched to over an hour. Brown went ahead early in the period on a shorthanded goal. Cornell's Pete Marcov tied the score at 14:23, but it took Brown just 16 seconds to go on top again. We speculated in the press box what else could happen to lengthen the game. The referee could get hit with the puck. Or the lights could go out. Or a piece of the glass above the boards could break. Or we could go into overtime. We were right about the overtime. With just 1:39 left, Cornell's Duanne Moeser made an outstanding play to tie the score at 4-4 and force the extra session. No way a game like this could end on a routine goal. At 12:16 (that's 16 minutes past midnight, not twelve minutes and 16 seconds into the ten-minute overtime) Brown's Jones won a faceoff to the left of the Cornell net. Bruin defenseman Brian Driscoll took a long shot. Goalie Edmands came out to make the save. The puck hit Cornell's Randy MacFarlane in the knee and deflected high in the air, and it was all too clear what was going to happen--the lazily floating puck and goalie Edmands were going to race each other to the far goalpost, and the puck was going to win. It did, and this bizarre hockey game was finally over, and Cornell had its second 5-4 loss in as many nights. The two defeats stretched the current losing streak to five, and dropped Cornell's ECAC record to 5-8. With just eight games remaining, Cornell needs a complete reversal of form, and soon, to get back into the playoff picture.