Hockey Pioneers
12/6/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Ice Hockey
Dec. 6, 2010
VIDEO: How Spartan Stadium became a Hockey Arena
This week, the Spartan hockey program will prepare for the Big Chill at the Big House, a showdown with archrival Michigan at Michigan Stadium which is expected to draw a world-record crowd of nearly 110,000 spectators. Nearly a decade ago, the Michigan State athletic department staged the first modern outdoor game, and it has grown from novelty to a now-annual event in the National Hockey League. Michigan State successfully hosting this event was the genesis for no fewer than 20 outdoor events executed or planned for the 2010-11 season since MSU put on the first one on Oct. 6, 2001.
Come back to www.msuspartans.com every day this week to revisit that inaugural event through the recollections of current and former Spartan players, staff, and administrators who helped give birth to one of the beloved now-annual events of a hockey season.
Today, when an organization prepares for an outdoor hockey game, they have plenty of prior events to learn from. But for Michigan State University, building an event for the iconic Cold War in 2001 was an adventure through the unknown.
Ron Mason, the Spartans' head coach at the time, recalled how his assistant coach, David McAuliffe, came up with the idea to do something that had never been done before - a regular-season hockey game played outdoors.
"One night [McAuliffe and I] were just talking and he brought up that idea," Mason said. "I said that I thought it was a little crazy, but who knows. We met with Mark Hollis, and asked Mark, `Hey Mark, think you could market something like this? Do you think it would work?'"
But when the idea went from fantasy to reality, it turned out to be a considerable amount of work for all parties concerned.
"[Hollis} went to work, and of course we went to the President and Vice President and had meetings, and they thought it would fly," said Mason. "At that point, we said, `Oh boy, we have to do it,' and it was a monumental task taken on by the whole athletic department. Greg Ianni and his staff - they did just a ton of work getting the ice and the rink itself set up. There were so many other groups - it was a real athletic department event, it wasn't just hockey. We didn't realize how much work it was until we got involved with it."
As he prepares for the Spartans' second outdoor game - the Big Chill to be played at Michigan Stadium on Dec. 11 - assistant coach Tom Newton, who held the same position during the Cold War, said that the school administration deserved the credit for taking on such a unique event.
"One of the big things I remember from that is the amount of time and work put in by people that you don't necessarily have with putting a hockey game on in your regular building," Newton said. "They were pioneers; they were the first to do it. The electricians, the carpenters, the Zamboni crews, all those guys, they put some serious time and hours in. I really give Michigan State's administration, and that time President M. Peter McPherson, giving the athletic department the stamp of approval. It was a gutsy call, and it's really started something in sports. In hockey for sure - these big games, and maybe if there wasn't the Cold War, there wouldn't have been the Winter Classic."
 Fans lined up for tickets for the Cold War  | |
The gamble by the administration paid off - very quickly in fact. Mason said that fans that bought their tickets as soon as they became available en route to a record-setting attendance for a hockey game.
"Everything just fell in place. It was phenomenal. The tickets sold really quickly. They asked me how many tickets we could sell, and I said well we sell 20,000 in Joe Louis Arena, I'm sure we could sell 25,000 for something like this.
"I was walking out of Munn Arena to the ticket office, and I see the line out the door, and I said to myself `what the heck are they doing out ?," Mason recalls. "Everybody started saying `Hey way to go coach, way to go.' And they were buying tickets. I think we sold around 50,000, and then we had to stop sales so we had tickets left for some of our donors and students.."
The temporary ice rink was constructed in the middle of Spartan Stadium, stretching to both 20-yard lines of the football field. The ice was five feet wider than Munn Ice Arena's ice, measuring in at 200 feet long and 90 feet wide. The ice was officially installed by Los Tres Papagayos of Van Nuys, Calif., a company who also built natural ice for the hockey movie Mystery, Alaska. Since the game was scheduled for Oct. 6, the ice needed to be kept frozen by 30 by 2.5 foot aluminum plates, which were attached to a 281-ton refrigeration unit pumping 1,500 gallons of glycol per minute.
If they ever scheduled another game at Spartan Stadium, the athletic department would probably consider a later date. The event organizers lived in fear the week heading up to historic game, because the temperature in East Lansing was fitting for baseball season, not hockey. Temperatures reached the high 70s that week, and crews were in a tough spot to keep the ice ready for the game. Snow was even gathered from Munn and brought across the street to Spartan Stadium to line the boards.
"I always think back and think it was a little crazy that we played that game in the October," said former Spartan center Troy Ferguson, who played from 2000-03. "We got so lucky with the weather. It was absolutely freezing cold that day. But I remember leading up to it; we practiced in the rain on Friday because it was pretty warm. There was lots of concern about the ice, because there was no way we could play a game in the rain.
"Then when game day came, it just got freezing cold," recalls the former Spartan skater. "It's funny to think about it now ... that game was Oct. 6, and it could be 90 degrees out some days in early October. The NHL does theirs on New Year's Day, which is a much safer bet. I think we got lucky, but it sure worked out well for us."
Because of the weather conditions earlier in the week, the ice crew was unable to paint the ice white, which made visibility difficult for TV viewers. But that was one of few problems MSU encountered with the event, though the players would have appreciated some advancements in technology that they have seen in later events. Adam Hall, who served as the Spartans' captain during the Cold War, played in the NHL Winter Classic with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2008, and he enjoyed some extra ways to keep warm.
"Basically [the Cold War] was a lot different from the one I played in with Pittsburgh in Buffalo," Hall said. "We had a lot more warm-weather gear and handwarmers and heated benches in Buffalo than we did in the very first game. So it was pretty much just trying to put on an extra layer of long underwear or something on under your stuff. It wasn't too bad, you just had to keep moving, even on the bench you had to keep wiggling your toes and moving your hands, because it does get a little chilly out there."
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Former Spartan goaltender Ryan Miller said that while looking back on one of his most memorable hockey events, he is impressed with what his school did for the sport.
"I thought it was great forward thinking," the Olympic silver medalist and NHL's Vezina Trophy winner said. "Our athletic department and coaching staff and the amount of people that went into planning it and building it, it was an outstanding idea to attract attention for hockey and the sport and college hockey, which always helps to get people interested and keep them coming to watch."
Mason said he is proud of what the Spartan community achieved on that cold October night in 2001.
"No one really knew how successful these things were going to be at that point," he said. "And ours turned out to be a phenomenal success, so I think other people looked at it and thought that it was pretty neat. We were kind of the leaders, we took a chance, and it worked out."
