There’s more to an ice hockey game than the players and coaches. Without an ice hockey maintenance staff, the game would be a nightmare.
Emily Hanninen, 23, team leader of the ice crew for the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Tampa Bay Times Forum, explained the behind-the-scene happenings of ice hockey.
Hanninen is a post-graduate student at USF Tampa, with a bachelor’s in psychology, and is working on a bachelor’s degree in international studies.
“I’m from Minnesota, so I already knew how to ice skate, and I’ve been playing hockey ever since I was five or six,” she said.
Until her senior year in high school, Hanninen played ice hockey. She missed being part of a team and just being involved in the game, and that’s one of the reasons why she loves her job and has been loyal to the team, ice crew and boss.
She gets back out onto the ice as a player once or twice a year when the team is out of town, and plays a game with the others on the ice crew.
When Hanninen moved to Tampa in 2009, her brother was working on the ice maintenance staff and helped get her a job.
On home game days, she gets to work around 7 a.m. and works until noon. She then leaves for classes and returns to the rink around 3 p.m., working until the game is over.
“During the mornings, I help set up for practice,” she said. “I have this bug sprayer full of hot water, and there are plastic pegs that go into the ground, and stick up a little bit, and hold the net in place. There’s ice that gets into the holes and cement because there’s a freezing system under the ice, so if water gets in there, it will freeze. So with the hot water, I’ll melt the ice so that the peg can fit in there.”
During the game, some of Hanninen’s duties include cleaning the glass, shoveling ice, helping to maintain the ice and repairing broken glass.
Keeping up the ice is a very complex process.
She explained that the ice has to be a certain temperature. If it gets too cold, it gets brittle and hard and will chip off. If it gets too warm, then it will be too soft, and it’s harder for the players to skate.
The ice has a temperature gauge that the ice crew must monitor throughout the game. The pucks are kept in a freezer, which keeps them hard so they can glide smoothly across the ice.
“The condition that the ice is in is amazing,” Hanninen said. “It’s smooth like butter. It’s hard in Florida because there is humidity, so that makes keeping the ice in a good condition more challenging.”
As the team leader of the ice crew, she directs the crew while her boss and the assistant are busy.
For two out of the four years that she has been employed with the ice crew, she was the only woman on staff. She was promoted to team leader during her second year.
“I’ve grown up with boys because my next door neighbor had two boys, and my brother would play with them, and they also had a little sister, so we’d always be following the boys around,” she said. “I was used to that, but leading a group of guys was a lot different. But they’ll tell you that I’m just one of the guys.”
Hanninen plans to attend graduate school after completing her second bachelor’s degree.
“I don’t see myself involved in ice hockey in the future,” she said. “There is a corporate side to hockey as well, but I just don’t see myself working in the sport.”
“Working this job is fun for me because it was such a big thing for me for such a long time. It started out as a part-time job, and it worked well with my school schedule. It was just a bonus that I love working here.”
