I don’t mean to make light (golf swing) of this situation, which was likely very scary in the moment for the people in attendance, but I couldn’t help but laugh at this Zamboni driver casually making sure he got his rig off of the ice despite an inferno raging around him.
I called hockey during my time in Stevens Point, and spent a fair amount of time with hockey players because of that. If you’ve ever met a ‘hockey guy,’ you know they’re a different breed. I don’t know how else to articulate it, but they just are. And Zamboni drivers are right there with them. Maybe even nuttier. At every hockey rink in the world, there’s ONE guy in charge of driving the Zamboni for almost every event. And they take that responsibility SERIOUSLY. It doesn’t matter if it’s a youth hockey event that’s going to have 22 people in the crowd, or Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, in their brains, every hockey game is treated with the same amount of reverence. And thus, the ice must be perfect.
Which is how you end up with footage like the above video. Sure, 99.9% of people would have cut bait on that Zamboni and run from the ice. But Zamboni drivers are the .01%. Do you know how much damage would have been done to this ice if he would have just let that Zamboni sit in the middle of the rink ablaze?? It would have melted a Zamboni shaped hole! Then they’d have to cancel the whole tournament and start from scratch. Not on this guy’s watch. He may never grow eyebrows again, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to let his ice suffer for this Zamboni’s faulty mechanics.
So some people will say this guy is coo coo for Cocoa Puffs. But not anyone who has spent any amount of time around hockey players/Zamboni drivers. Every other Zamboni driver on the planet watched this video and didn’t bat an eye. That’s the code.
PS: It wasn’t until I started covering UWSP hockey that I had every been in a hockey locker room. It is, without question, the most awful smelling place you could ever imagine. If you know, you know. If you don’t, keep it that way.
Double PS: Clip Relevancy Rating: 8.1:
Triple PS: Clip Relevancy rating 9.2/10:
