What Happened To The Ice?

If the ice in the image to the left looks a little off, this was a real thing in 2005. With the NHL lockout in full effect, the AHL was seeing a pile of stars play nightly who should have been on NHL rosters while the NHL and AHL brass looked at all sorts of options to make the game better during AHL games. The image to the left is from one of those games where the ice was coloured "electric powder blue", the blue lines were painted almost fluorescent orange, and the red line was painted dark blue. If those changes seem drastic, it was meant for a specific reason as per the NHL.

According to an archived USA Today article, "[t]he blue ice is part of an experiment that was approved by both the NHL and AHL after officials discussed changing the ice color from white to enhance how the game is viewed by both live and television audiences."

You might be wondering why the NHL decided to give this idea any thought, but 2005 was the year that HDTV became a big thing that everyone had to have with Steve Jobs opening MacWorld that year "with the proclamation that 2005 is the 'year of high-definition video,'" so professional hockey was trying to keep ahead of the emerging television technology. After all, fans could have an HDTV in their homes for the NHL to give them the best view possible!

The game on March 20, 2005 where this was first tried featured the Rochester Americans and the Cleveland Barons playing in Buffalo's HSBC Arena in front of 15,288 fans as per the gamesheet. Paul Gaustad beat Nolan Schaefer in the first period and Rory Fitzpatrick added a second Americans goal from Geoff Peters and Daniel Paille while shorthanded in the second period, and that's all the scoring that Americans netminder Ryan Miller needed as Rochester captured the 2-0 victory. For what it's worth, Rochester ended up being the AHL's best team that season with 112 points with a record of 51-19-10 while Cleveland was last in the North Division with a 35-37-8 record and 78 points, 11 points back of a playoff spot.

As per the players, some noticed the new paint job on the ice while it seemingly had no effect on others based on their comments.

"I didn't notice it too much from a player's standpoint," Fitzpatrick told USA Today. "It was hardly noticeable at all."

Derek Roy had a different view of the ice after watching the game from the pressbox, telling The Associated Press, "From afar there was a distinct difference, as the black puck seemed to stand out well on its powder-blue backdrop, especially when it slid along the orange 'blue' lines. I think the orange lines really stood out. I think that was a positive. But overall, it didn't look that much different. It looked like everyone adapted and everyone liked it."

Fans seemed to agree with Roy's assessment of the new ice colours.

"I think it looks great," Sabres fan Alysa White told USA Today. "It takes some getting used to, but I really don't mind it at all."

While there was no guarantee these colour changes or any of the other changes - two-foot blue lines, larger nets, the trapezoid - would stick for NHL play when it resumed once the lockout ended, the Buffalo Sabres seemed pretty happy to partner with the NHL to put these experimental ideas to the test inside the HSBC Arena.

"We are very excited to experiment with a light blue ice surface," Buffalo Sabres Managing Partner Larry Quinn told AHL.com. "The National Hockey League first introduced the idea of using different types of ice colors and we asked their permission to experiment with the blue ice concept during our two upcoming AHL games. We think the action on the ice will show up better on television with a blue surface and will be easier to see the flow of the puck."

Depsite the somewhat-positive feedback for the ice, the Americans would play a second game on the powder blue surface against the St. John's Maple Leafs at HSBC Arena in front of 15,326 fans. Jason Pominville would record a hat trick and Thomas Vanek had a pair of goals for the Americans to erase Kyle Wellwood's two goals, and the Americans downed the Maple Leafs by a 6-4 score on April 3, 2005.

I couldn't find a single article about this game with the online newspaper archive being down, so there aren't any further comments about the blue ice. However, it seems like the thinking for the blue ice was similar to the experience that hockey fans had when hockey debuted on TV in the 1950s. As per a McGill University article,

"Television viewers got their first glimpse of painted ice on October 11, 1952 with the initial Hockey Night in Canada telecast. When color television appeared, cameras couldn't handle the brilliant white ice surface and it had to be painted blue. Technology soon overcame this faux-pas so that today we can watch hockey played on a white sheet of ice, as it should be."

With the innovation of high-definition television, it seems like the NHL was trying to learn from a mistake they made in the past by painting the ice blue in these test games. Despite the two games showing no adverse effects for players or fans when it came to playing or watching the game, it seems we were fairly close to seeing blue ice, bright orange lines and face-off markings, and a blue line at centre ice in an effort to make the game easier to watch on HDTV!

Ok, maybe we weren't THAT close considering that those two games were the only games we saw with the blue ice in the AHL that season or in any other season, but those two games should be remembered for what could have been had the NHL gone ahead with their HDTV idea. Frankly, the game looks pretty good in high-definition without any new paint on the ice, so perhaps this blue ice experiment was just to confirm that white ice works best on high-definition TVs.

Or, as the McGill article stated more succinctly, "today we can watch hockey played on a white sheet of ice, as it should be." 'Nuff said.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!