TORONTO – The weirdest sight inside Scotiabank Arena is not the seat covers, the giant screens, or the LED lights. He’s the man running through all that, literally running, climbing the seats, avoiding obstacles, with a pool skimmer.
He has been called the “pool boy”.
Have we gone to the bottom? The opposite, actually. In a swimming or swimming situation like this, the NHL needs attention to detail, teamwork, and problem solving, not to mention humor.
“The bubble is about being creative with the tools at hand, and everyone’s willingness to participate is quite special,” said Rachel Segal, senior director of events and entertainment for the NHL. “We always have that mindset at events, but especially now.”
The NHL has never done anything like this before. After pausing the season on March 12 due to concerns about the coronavirus, he will return with a 24-team tournament in two core cities: 12 teams from the Eastern Conference in Toronto, 12 teams from the Western Conference in Edmonton. With no fans in the stands, it is an event made for television.
Stanley Cup Qualifiers begin when the New York Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes play Game 1 of a Top 5 series at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday (12pm ET; SN, TVAS, NBCSN, NHL.TV, FS-CR , MSG).
The NHL has tried to think of everything, but unanticipated problems inevitably arise. As the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins played the first exhibition on Tuesday, Segal noticed discs thrown into the seat covers. It is not a clean look for television.
“It clicked in my brain, like, ‘Oh sure, we’re going to need a record collector,’ which obviously isn’t usually on our radar when there are fans looking for records,” Segal said.
But who was going to do it? And how? The seat covers span the width of the sections and are many rows high. Some discs are out of reach. The seat covers are also made of a stretchy fabric, so the disc cannot be loaded onto them.
Segal texted Brian Murphy, vice president of events for Infinite Scale, the company that designed the seat covers, and Derek King, NHL senior facility operations manager.
“Brian’s concern was obviously choosing a tool that would not damage the seat covers,” Segal said.
Hmm …
“I think we just started throwing ideas away,” said Anthony Jusino, production manager for Aurora Events, a subcontractor for Hotopp, the company NHL hired to build the set. “You just start throwing, ‘Okay. What can you achieve?’ “
A hockey stick? A mop handle? A squeegee?
“You just start going down the list and start throwing out bad ideas until a good idea comes up,” Jusino said.
Murphy suggested a pool skimmer.
But where do you find a pool skimmer in the safe area? What do you do when you can’t wait for one to be delivered? They sent a non-bubble runner to Canadian Tire to buy two pool skimmers for around $ 90 and they had them at the end of the game.
Jusino and Geoff Quart, technical director of Aurora Productions, were ready to fish for records when the Montreal Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs played at the second show that night. The Edmonton center was alerted so that it could also purchase its own pool skimmers.
Most discs fall into the seat covers during warm-up. It’s a big arena, and there’s only a long time before the cameras turn on. After the Rangers and New York Islanders warmed up Wednesday night, Jusino walked through the stands with a pool skimmer, Quart with a long cardboard tube.
“Now I’m working on my method of collecting them,” said Jusino. “Depending on how tight the cover is, sometimes you can pop it to flip it over to the pool skimmer, and sometimes you just have to put the glove on it and pull it back.”
They climbed into the seats. They avoided the foci. In the end, they ducked behind a black curtain and returned to the reconfigured suite that serves as their office. One had five discs, the other four.
“That’s what we do,” said Quart. “I mean, ultimately, this is all a lot of problem solving, right?”
Perhaps the most impressive part of the story is that there haven’t been that many problems to solve, especially under the circumstances.
Aurora Productions generally works on Broadway, not Broadway Blueshirts. After Broadway closed due to the pandemic, Jusino and Quart were delighted to get a concert with the NHL.
They had to buy 800 yards of black fabric and 500 binder clips, worth four Staples stores, to put the fabric on some seats this week, after they found they didn’t like the look of the yellow seats on the seat covers. . Jusino became what Segal jokingly called the “pool boy”. But otherwise, things have gone perfectly.
“It’s crazy, because normally there are six or seven of these fools, little ones, ‘How did you fix this?’ ‘Well …’ “Jusino said. “There are always those funny stories. The kit we came in with was pretty good.”
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