BOSTON — The NHL mobile refrigeration unit arrived in Boston on Monday, a harbinger of what is to come, a flurry of building and work and refrigeration set to take place on the field inside. With 14 days until puck drop for the 2023 Discover NHL Winter Classic, the 53-foot trailer sat wedged onto a narrow street next to Fenway Park on a bright and sunny afternoon.
On the field were the remnants of the most recent event at the home of baseball’s Boston Red Sox, the 2022 Wasabi Fenway Bowl between football teams from the University of Cincinnati and University of Louisville. But it won’t be long before any memory of football hash marks will be wiped away and the scene set for the NHL to take over the historic ballpark for the second time in its history, this time for the Boston Bruins and the Pittsburgh Penguins. face off on Jan. 2 (2 p.m. ET; TNT, TVAS, SN).
“That event moved out. We have now moved in,” said Derek King, NHL senior director, facilities operations & hockey operations. “The armor deck will go down and will cover pretty much the entire field. And then we’ll start putting down our stage decking. The aluminum pans will go on top. And then from that, we’ll start making ice, dasher boards will get installed, the acrylic will get installed.”
King had arrived in Boston the evening before, set to help direct the building of the rink as the time ticks down to game time. His ice crew numbers about 18 people in Boston, but including all the people involved in the production, including from MLB Advanced Media, it is closer to 80 to 100.
“Today is a pretty busy day for the guys doing all the on-field work and then tomorrow will be a really busy day for us doing all the piping,” said King, who got to see Fenway Park for the first time Monday.
King wasn’t with the NHL the last time the League played at Fenway Park, back in 2010 for the third Winter Classic, but he’s learned enough over the past 11 years of outdoor builds to be ready for anything that’s to come.
“It’s really a team approach,” King said. “We’ve got a couple of guys that were here the last time we had a game at Fenway. And we learn something new every year. Obviously, you can’t control the outdoor elements, but how we do the build, look at the schedules, and just fine-tuning some of the stuff we do with the truck, all that new technology has really helped us.”
[RELATED: Winter Classic rendering for Fenway Park unveiled]
For now, the weather in Boston appears like it might be cooperating.
“Right now, it’s looking good,” King said. “I think we have some rain on Friday. If it rains everyone says, ‘oh, rain is bad.’ But a cool rain that we’re looking at – I think we’re going to be in the mid-50s on Friday – everything should be done if we’re on schedule. We’ll kind of use the rain to our advantage. We’ll freeze that and that will kind of get us ahead, hopefully, going into the Christmas break.”
The truck that’s now sitting outside Fenway Park is a marvel, the world’s largest mobile NHL rink refrigeration unit, with state-of-the-art ice-making and -monitoring equipment.
But getting it in place was only the first step of many that must be completed between now and game time.
“We like to be ahead – obviously with an outdoor game and Mother Nature, you don’t know what you’re going to get,” King said. “With the game on the 2nd, practice day is on the 1st, we would like to finish up late on the 30th or early on the 31st, just to give us some time to see how everything is running, the truck is running.
“And the practice day is a practice day for the teams, but it’s also a practice day for us to make sure everything is working as we want.”
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