FOCAL POINT
ICE, ICE BABY What does it take to build an ice slab foundation for an NHL hockey rink? Try 320 cubic metres of concrete, delivered by nearly 40 trucks. That’s enough to build a standard city sidewalk about a half-kilometre long. The 12-hour process involved 20 workers monitoring levels, installing over 16 kilometres of cooling pipe, conducting pressure checks, and meticulously smoothing out the concrete as it was being poured. Most ice slabs are poured on a clay-and-gravel base. Not Rogers Place’s, though. It’s one of the few NHL rinks to sit atop a parkade. Beneath the eight- inch slab is another slab — a 16-inch structural one, above the parkade.
BIG AND TALL
Hockey fans, rejoice. Game statistics, replays, crowd shots, promotions, and everything else you look for above the ice just got bigger. A lot bigger. Rogers Place will feature the largest high-definition scoreboard in any NHL arena and possibly in the world. • The cube-shaped mega-board spans much of the rink’s length, from blue line to blue line.
• It measures 14 metres wide by 14 metres deep, is 11 metres high, and weighs 40,800 kilograms — that’s the weight of Connor McDavid times 475, and the size of the Rexall scoreboard times 4.5. • The new scoreboard was built in the U.S. and shipped to Canada. • Eight trucks delivered the frame; another eight delivered pieces of the LED screens.
SURFABLE rogersplace.com
60 | PEG FALL 2016
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