Ice truck arrives for 2024 Discover Winter Classic in Seattle

The NHL mobile refrigeration truck arrived in Seattle on Sunday night ahead of the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic.

The Seattle Kraken will host the Vegas Golden Knights at T-Mobile Park on Jan. 1, 2024 (3 p.m. ET; MAX, TNT, SN, TVAS). The refrigeration truck is the same one used to construct the outdoor rink at the 2023 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton on Oct. 29. The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Calgary Flames in that event 5-2.

“A few of us got here yesterday, so we parked our mobile refrigeration unit last night and started to cover the field yesterday, and things really took off this morning,” Andrew Higgins, NHL senior manager facility and hockey operations said Monday. “We’ve got the stage decking starting to go down underneath the rink, lots of trucks being unloaded today and then we’ll start installing piping tomorrow.”

The state-of-the-art refrigeration truck travels to venues throughout North America to make outdoor ice for numerous NHL events. The truck is usually stored in Ontario but was kept in a yard in Edmonton following the Heritage Classic before making the 870-mile journey to Seattle.

From there, it will travel across the country for the 2024 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Feb. 17 and 18.

“This is going to New York,” Higgins said. “This is our newer unit, so it definitely carries the bulk of the workload these days.”

Mike Craig, NHL senior director of hockey operations and facilities operation, expects the rink construction process in Seattle to run as smoothly as it did in Edmonton. The weather cooperated in Edmonton throughout the building process and for the game, creating an ideal environment for an outdoor game.

Seattle will present different challenges with the amount of rain the region sees during the winter. T-Mobile Park, however, has a retractable roof. The stadium is home to the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball and has a capacity of 47,929.

“Every venue that we go to is unique,” Craig said. “One of the things with baseball stadiums, depending on their layout, really impacts our piping run. Similar to this, we’re parked outside of left centerfield, and we’ll bring our piping in and up over the wall and down towards first base. There are little different things like that presenting challenges, but those are things we’ve seen in the past, made some changes and adapted to and we’re ready to go.”

The roof at T-Mobile Park will remain closed during the construction process. The hope is to open it for the team practices and the game.

“The rain matters, but it matters much less that we’re able to close the roof,” Higgins said. “Rain can be our friend if it comes down slowly, it builds ice for us. But if it comes down heavy, it melts ice on us, so it is certainly nice to have a roof that closes, so we don’t have to worry about that.”

The long-range forecast for Seattle on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day looks promising, with temperatures hovering well above the freezing mark.

“The long-range for practice and game days is mid-40s and cloudy,” Higgins said. “If that holds true, that will be perfect, so we’re fingers crossed that doesn’t turn to rain on us.”

After Edmonton worked out so well, Craig and Higgins are optimistic the first outdoor NHL game in Seattle will be a huge success as well. It will be the 39th regular-season outdoor game held by the NHL.

“In Edmonton, the weather throughout the entire event, day-to-day was almost perfect for us,” Craig said. “Really as far as the event goes and the build for our part of the event, I thought everything went very smooth We usually have a very detailed production schedule, and everything really went according to plan there. We anticipate the same thing here, a very detailed plan and schedule that we’ll work through, and everything should go according to plan.”