Aaron Doster-Imagn Images
There are plenty of things that can go wrong when you’re driving thousands of pounds of metal over a sheet of solid ice. Most Zamboni drivers are able to do exactly that without any issues, but one person working at a hockey game in Germany was responsible for it being called off after inadvertently wreaking some havoc.
It’s hard not to be someone entranced by the machines that roll out onto the rink in between periods at a hockey game to provide players with a fresh sheet of ice after they head back out of the locker room.
That in-game ceremony was made possible by Frank Zamboni, the emponympus inventor of the resurfacer he unveiled in 1949 a decade after buying an ice rink in California. Prior to that point, his employees had to head out onto the surface with squeegees in order to give it a facelift by hand, and his innovation turned it into a one-person job that could be completed in a fraction of the time.
You’d be hard-pressed to find many rinks that don’t have a Zamboni on standby in this day and age, and the people tasked with piloting them are usually experienced drivers who know how to avoid losing control of the vehicles that can weigh well over 10,000 pounds once they’re loaded up with water.
However, things can go south every now and then, and that was certainly the case at a hockey game in Germany on Sunday.
A hockey game between the Höchstadt Alligators and the Stuttgart Rebels in Germany was canceled after a Zamboni crashed into the boards
Germany’s pro hockey system consists of six different tiers. The Deutsche Eishockey Liga is the country’s premier organization, with DEL2 taking the second spot on the podium and the Oberliga coming in third.
The Höchstadt Alligators are one of the 25 teams that currently comprise the Oberliga, and they headed into Sunday’s showdown with the Stuttgart Rebels with a 2-9 record that firmly put them in the basement of the league.
The Alligators were hoping to get a couple of points against the 6-9 Rebels, but neither team was able to improve their position in the standings after the game was called off due to an incident where the Zamboni collided with the boards and shattered a piece of the glass that couldn’t be replaced.
A Reddit user who was at the game captured a picture that showed the ground covered in shattered glass near the doors where the Zamboni enters and exits (they noted “after he hit the door, he just reversed and kept on doing his laps”).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t use this as an excuse to mention another Zamboni crash that transpired in Quebec last year and led to the driver being hit with a DUI charge. However, there’s nothing that suggests alcohol played a role in this one.