A hockey fan’s wildest ride: Hanging on while making ice
After sitting in the bowels of PNC for a few minutes, the shout of “doors! doors!” was suddenly ringing through the corridor.
I turned to Matt Morefield, my Olympia ice-resurfacer/temporary Uber driver, and asked if that meant we were about to hit the ice. My ride at center ice of an NHL playoff game was about to begin.
I grew up down the road from a great uncle who owned a farm and a grandfather who owned a construction company. I spent most of my youth riding (and sometimes driving) everything from combines to fork lifts to tractors of all different sizes that served different purposes depending on what was in season.
These days in Raleigh it’s playoff season, and at the first intermission of the Carolina Hurricanes’ Game 4 win over the New York Islanders, the latest vehicle I would conquer would be the 7,032-pound Olympia ice-resurfacer. The machines are popularly known as Zambonis, for the competitor’s brand, but PNC has always used Olympias.
The team uses two to recondition the ice at each intermission, scraping off the top layer and laying down a new, smooth one, and two lucky fans or sponsors or celebrities (in this case, one curious reporter) get to ride along.
The Hurricanes are obviously the headliners, but in my mind people love the Olympia co-pilot. Especially when it’s someone famous: Friday, the other rider was the Bud Light knight mascot.
In his three years driving the Olympia for the Carolina Hurricanes, Morefield has had his fair share of characters take the ride. Most people ham it up with the fans, waving like royalty as if they were in a parade. If a rider doesn’t wave first, the fans will start it.
One time a fan dropped her phone while going live on Facebook during the ride. Morefield wasn’t going to stop the Olympia, which tops out at about 15 miles per hour, so he went back to get it afterward. The Facebook live was still going on, with about 100 people watching.
“When I first started working here I paid attention to the crowd a lot,” Morefield said. “Now I’ve been doing it so many times, it’s kind of like a horse, I’m just looking in front of me. Most of the time I don’t even notice the crowd.”
The rider sits next to the driver, facing the opposite direction. As Morefield cranked the machine and moved into line behind the first Olympia and the Bud Light knight. I suddenly felt like I was on what was once called the Rebel Yell, a wooden roller coaster at Kings Dominion where you could ride backwards.
I couldn’t see what we were approaching because my back was to the ice, but I knew we were getting close as soon as I heard several fans shout “dilly dilly” from the Bud Light commercials. The knight was stealing the show before I was even on the ice.
Morefield was right about one thing: the fans will wave. I had practiced my parade wave hours before I arrived at PNC. I spent most of the time recording the experience on my phone, gripping the handle tight on my phone holder.
We made about three laps. While the majority of the record-setting crowd of 19,495 took advantage of the break to visit the concession stands or bathrooms, the ones who remained in their seats made me and the knight feel like celebrities during our brief ride.
And brief it was. My anticipation built up all day for an unforgettable moment that was over in five minutes. My moment in the spotlight.
Before I left, someone I didn’t know walked up to me and said, with so much excitement, “You were just on the Olympia machine!”
I guess I can compete with the Bud Light knight after all.
This story was originally published May 4, 2019 at 1:45 PM.
