NHL hub cities Toronto, Edmonton get ready for teams to arrive
Crews adding finishing touches in Edmonton, Toronto with games less than week away
The buzzing of electric saws and the whirring of power drills was drowned out occasionally by bursts of music from the sound system, which accompanied videos and graphics being tested on the six LED screens that line one side of the arena bowl.
The sounds and actions of the work crews carried the same urgency the players have been practicing with in recent days in anticipation of the NHL's Return to Play.
The teams are scheduled to arrive Sunday. The first exhibition game here between the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames is Tuesday (10:30 p.m. ET; NHLN, SN, NHL.TV). The Qualifiers begin Aug. 1 with the Oilers playing the Chicago Blackhawks and the Calgary Flames playing the Winnipeg Jets in Game 1 of their best-of-5 series.
Though a lot of the preparations in the arena, the practice facilities and the two hotels where the teams will be staying have been completed, some remained to be finished Saturday.
"We're very close," NHL senior executive vice president and chief content officer Steve Mayer said while touring Rogers Place with members of the League events and Rogers Place staffs Friday. "We're going around right now to find out the things that we don't have done. But in a good 24 hours, we should have everything ready to go."
A similar scene is taking place at Scotiabank Arena and the other facilities in Toronto that will host the 12 Eastern Conference teams in the Qualifiers. It's been a massive team effort in the hub cities to prepare to safely play games amid the coronavirus pandemic that caused the NHL to pause the season March 12.
Mayer has been in Edmonton for almost two weeks with much of his staff working alongside staff from Rogers Place. Many of them were in the arena by 7 a.m. Friday and some continued to work well past 7 p.m. Saturday was also a long day.
"You find the adrenaline starts flowing and you'd be surprised how crazy it is in the last 24 hours before any event we ever do," Mayer said. "It's like finding stuff in hallways that we've got to move. All these things you see, people just get all amped up and then they get it done."
Mayer began his Friday with a radio interview at 7 a.m., followed by two more before he headed to Rogers Place and participated in two video conference calls with the media. After the final video call, Mayer looked at his phone and saw he had more than 100 new emails with various questions and issues to be resolved.
He quickly handled one about camera positioning on a platform that was constructed Friday morning. Then, Mayer raced off for his daily COVID-19 test in Rogers Place's Ford Hall lobby area. Players, coaches and team staff members are to be tested daily in the same area.
Down the escalator from Ford Hall, an entrance area that flooded during a storm July 16 has been cleaned and reconfigured to host another testing area. By the time Mayer toured it Friday evening (after making a quick phone call to his father-in law to wish him a happy 91st birthday), there was little remaining evidence of the water damage from eight days earlier.
"The setback last Thursday night certainly put another wrinkle in how we were going to prepare," said Stuart Ballantyne, senior vice president of operations for Oilers Entertainment Group and general manager of Rogers Place. "We lost a lot of systems offline for quite some time, but everything is back up and running and we're very pleased with the work that has had to be done to recover and get everything operational to be able host games on Tuesday."
Inside the arena bowl, Rogers Place's ice crew worked with NHL senior facility operations director Dan Craig and son Mike Craig to build up the ice, which was installed earlier this week. Workers hung a large Stanley Cup Qualifier banner in the stands at one end of the rink while the game presentation staff tested the large LED screens and the videos they plan to play on them during the games to add to the atmosphere for the players in the building and the television viewers.
The presentation staff tested videos and graphics from the Arizona Coyotes, Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche and Chicago Blackhawks on Friday.
"All the content coming in, the graphics, the team stuff is being loaded into the control room here, and same in Toronto," NHL senior director of event and game presentation John Bochiaro said. "Today and tomorrow we're starting to go through the content one by one making sure everything works and looks good on the boards."
The six locker rooms in Rogers Place -- the Oilers room, the visiting NHL room, the home room for the Edmonton Oil Kings of the Western Hockey League, the visiting WHL room, and two rooms the NHL created for the Qualifiers -- are nearly ready to be loaded with the teams' equipment. The stocking of the locker rooms with personal protective equipment, sanitary wipes and bottles of hand sanitizer were to be among the final touches Saturday.
The NHL also created player lounges for each of the 12 teams, some in suites and preexisting lounges and one in a curtained-off section of the main concourse. Each features a pingpong table, card tables, televisions to watch the games, and Sony PlayStation4 consoles for the video gamers.
"We've literally morphed every single space in this arena into something different," Ballantyne said.
Mayer, Ballantyne and members of their staffs toured each of the player lounges Friday evening. Every detail was reviewed including signage, table and chair spacing, stocking with sanitary wipes, and how food and drink will be delivered to each lounge.
There was more to review Saturday at Rogers Place, the practice rinks and the hotels to get them ready for the arrival of the teams.
The Blackhawks will be the first team other than the Oilers to practice in Edmonton on Sunday. They plan to bus from the airport directly to the Terwillegar Community Recreation Centre, a facility with four sheets of ice that is a 25-minute drive from Rogers Place, and practice before checking into their hotel.
Some might see that as the finish line to this arduous process, but not Mayer.
"It's the starting line," he said. "This is our exhibition and when those players walk into their hotel it's got to look like we're kind of done. We're all casual until Sunday when we've got to get serious."
