For Dan Craig, the National Hockey League’s vice president of facilities operations, the most difficult part of the past 10 days was only tangentially related to the regulation-size NHL rink he and his crew have constructed in the middle of Heinz Field.
“The most challenging [aspect] is getting sleep,” Craig said with a laugh.
Between rink construction, television production, attendance (60,000-plus) and even down to the play on the ice, every aspect of Saturday night’s Stadium Series game between the Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers will be just a little bit different — and, in many aspects, more challenging — than your run-of-the-mill indoor NHL game.
That’s part of what makes it fun, right?
“That’s what the challenge is, that’s why you do it,” Craig said.
Craig and his staff have been working virtually 24/7 since Feb. 13 with no detail overlooked, starting with the foundation of the rink.
Like most NFL fields, the surface at Heinz Field is not flat. The field slopes downward from the middle toward the sidelines, creating what is known as a “crown” to help with drainage during football season.
“The orientation’s different, the slope of the ground’s different,” Dan Craig, the NHL’s vice president of facilities operations, said of the playing surface at Heinz Field. “All those little things, you take those into consideration when you’re coming.” (Nate Guidry/Post-Gazette)“It’s all surveyed,” Craig said. “The staging company already knows what level it’s supposed to be for us to be on grade so that you get the maximum amount of seats unobstructed at the lower end.”
That’s one part of the setup that is different at Heinz Field than, say, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, the baseball stadium where the NHL held its outdoor Winter Classic this year.
“The orientation’s different, the slope of the ground’s different,” Craig said. “All those little things, you take those into consideration when you’re coming, where you park your truck, where your hoses go; all that type of stuff is really taken into consideration when we make the drawings.”
And while it may just be “different” for Craig and his staff, having the game at a football stadium is definitively a positive for Charlie Dammeyer, who will direct Saturday’s game for NBC.
“This is logistically a little bit easier than doing the Winter Classic in Busch Stadium,” Dammeyer said. “Because that’s built for baseball, you kind of have to create camera positions for a hockey game. [At Heinz Field], for all intents and purposes, this is a hockey rink within the 20-yard lines.”
Dammeyer can essentially use the existing Heinz Field infrastructure for his cameras, and have them centered right on the red line.
“The sight lines are going to be excellent,” he said.
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Dammeyer also directed the Winter Classic in St. Louis, and said the biggest challenge of doing an outdoor game from a television perspective is the sheer increase in space that exists at a football stadium as opposed to an indoor NHL venue.
“Things that are easier within an arena maybe become a little more challenging, whether it be length of cable runs, camera positions,” he said. “The outdoor stadium is built for football or it’s built for baseball, depending on what stadium we’re in. Things like that that you may take for granted inside an arena that does 41 hockey games a year, that now becomes, ‘Oh, I’ve got to think about this a little bit more or I’ve got to choreograph this a little bit more.’”
But for as many challenges as an outdoor game may present, Dammeyer is equally excited about the opportunities they present.
He said his overarching philosophy as director is to stay out of the way and present the game — “Hey, look, if I’m sitting on the couch at home with a beer in my hand, what do I want to see?” — but he also is looking forward to some additional “toys” at his disposal.
That includes the overhead wire camera used for football games, a tool that can present a new look at power plays, for instance, as well as an aerial camera in a plane overhead.
“To me, an awesome angle would be if you got a breakaway goal from the airplane,” Dammeyer said. “How unique is that? That’s something you don’t see everyday.”
Of course, that aerial camera is also contingent on having a high enough cloud ceiling Saturday night. Like everyone else associated with the game, Dammeyer has been checking the weather report frequently this week.
Aspects such as rink staging and camera positioning can be taken into account in advance, but some challenges — notably the weather — don’t make themselves apparent until the week of the game. Especially with the unseasonably warm weather in Pittsburgh this week, Craig has been paying particular attention to make sure the ice stays at a suitable temperature.
Even subtle variations, like the rink going into the shade, can affect the surface temperature by 10 or 12 degrees.
“I need to know and I have to worry about when the sun sets,” Craig said. “That’s a big thing that happens when you’re doing this type of setup.”
Crews prepare the ice on Tuesday. “You just have to make sure, as far as the ice is concerned, you’re not trying to do too much,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. (Matt Freed/Post-Gazette)Despite the best efforts of Craig and his crew, though, Penguins who have played in outdoor games before know the ice surfaces are usually a bit rougher than they get in a normal arena.
“You just have to make sure, as far as the ice is concerned, you’re not trying to do too much,” Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. “Most times it can get a little chippy out there and soft depending on what happens. You try not to over-handle it too much, I think that’s probably the biggest thing.”
The other weather-related challenge for the players will be making sure they’re comfortable in unpredictable temperatures. Penguins winger Carl Hagelin has played in five outdoor games in college and the NHL, and said he’s used to bundling up for them. With temperatures Saturday potentially in the 50s, though, hydration might become more important.
[Read more: Does the NHL have too many outdoor games?]
“Depending on the weather, obviously, you might wear some more stuff underneath,” Hagelin said. “I guess if it’s really hot, I don’t know what you do then. If it’s hot outside, you definitely need to make sure you’re fueling up in terms of liquid.”
Despite the extra preparation for Saturday night’s game, there’s some comfort in knowing that one part is still the same: Two points are on the line in a divisional rivalry game with barely more than a month left in the regular season.
“These games that we put on are not exhibition games,” Craig said. “There’s points on the table, this is late in the season. Every point counts, and we never lose focus of that.”
Sam Werner: swerner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @SWernerPG
First Published: February 24, 2017, 5:00 a.m.
