There's A Chill In The Air

How's it Road Warriors fans!? I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve because there is a chill in the air, and I don't mean the 65-70 degree weather we've been having lately (actually I do love that too since it reminds me of the weather back home). The chill is coming from within the BI-LO Center because the refrigeration system has been turned on and they are starting to make the ice! Check out the pictures I took:

Testing out the scoreboard and setting up the display.

Early in the morning, putting down some water.

Around lunchtime. The layer of white paint going down.

I spoke to Nikki Malpass, who is in charge of event services at the BI-LO Center, earlier this week and they are expecting to have the ice ready to skate on by Friday. Nikki, Chris Williams, Dwight Rust, Ken Luis are working their butts off to get the ice in and ready for the Warriors. If you know them or see them around the rink this season be sure to thank them for all of their hard work.

If you're unfamiliar with how ice is built at an arena it's a pretty cool process. Before any water or paint is put down the refrigeration system must be turned on at the arena. Once the system is on it works to bring the temp down and eventually freeze the concrete floor that the ice is built upon. After the concrete has cooled down enough a thin layer of water is sprayed down. Here at the BI-LO Center they used a machine that looked like something you'd use to irrigate farm crops. It looked like two short field goal uprights with wheels attached to the bottom and three spouts pointing down from what would be the crossbar. They wheeled the contraption over the floor to get a nice, even spray.

From there the white paint is put down with a sprayer. With the white painted on the rink is now ready for all of the lines and logos. This is the most tedious part of building the rink. All of the lines for the faceoff circles, the goalies' creases, goal lines, blue lines, and the center red line are painted in by hand. The ice logos, however, aren't. They are created by a graphics company and are actually made of very fine mesh. The logos will be aligned on the ice in the proper position and then tacked down at the corners with a sprayer. When everything is finally in the proper position the hose is brought out and they flood the rink and build the ice up to about 3/4 of an inch. It seems hard to believe, but that is all the thicker the ice gets.

With the ice down, all that remains is putting the glass and protective netting up as well as applying the sponsors' logos to the dasher boards. Getting the dasher ads on is pretty much just like putting really big stickers on the wall. It certainly is a lot of work to get the rink ready, and not much time remains before the home opener against Florida on October 21.

Speaking of the home opener, I'm sure many of you are wondering how the roster is shaping up as we draw ever closer to the 21st. Well fear not because the training camp rosters will be revealed this Friday. The ECHL will make a league-wide announcement of the training camp rosters at 1:00 p.m. ET on the first with the teams making their own announcements after that. You'll be able to see the full camp roster at www.greenvilleroadwarriors.com. To help fill in the gap, I'm going to have a post tomorrow featuring a conversation with Coach Dean Stork. Coach Stork has spent the last few days in Hartford and Glenns Falls taking in some of the Wolfpack's and Phantoms' training camps. A bunch of our players were taking part in those camps so it will be interesting to get his thoughts on what he observed.

Until then keep thinking cool thoughts because the start of the season will be here before we know it!