Fred Bowen's "The Score" column,
April 20, 2001, Washington Post

On the Ice, Z Marks the Spot

Hockey is back in the headlines. The National Hockey League playoffs have started and 16 teams are battling for the Stanley Cup, hockey's biggest prize.

Hockey is back in the headlines. The National Hockey League playoffs havestarted and 16 teams are battling for the Stanley Cup, hockey's biggest prize.

I like hockey, and especially playoff hockey. The games are close, hard-hitting and always intense.

But the coolest thing about hockey isn't the lightning-quick stick work, bone-crunching checks or even the sudden-death overtimes. The coolest thing about hockey is the Zamboni.

The Zamboni. You know, the big machine that hums around the ice between periods and turns the chipped, rutted surface into a brand new, smooth-as-glass sheet of ice. Anybody who has ever been to a hockey game has probably thought, wouldn't it be great to take a spin around the ice in a Zamboni.

Even the name is cool. Zamboni.

Why is it called a Zamboni? Simple. The guy who invented it fifty years ago was named Frank Zamboni. Here is the story.

In 1939, ice skating was becoming a popular sport. So Frank Zamboni, who lived in Southern California, and his brother and cousin built an ice rink and called it "Iceland." Back then it took more than an hour to make a new ice surface. A tractor pulled a scraper across the ice while several workers scooped away loose ice chips, hosed down the ice and waited for the water to freeze.

Frank Zamboni was always trying to make this work go faster. He liked to tinker, and by 1949 he had invented his first ice resurfacing machine. The machine did the work in a fraction of the time and the ice was always nice and smooth. A famous figure skater, Sonja Henie, saw the machine a year later and ordered two for her traveling ice show.

Suddenly, Frank Zamboni had a new business and sports had a new word: Zamboni.

The National Hockey League was one of Frank Zamboni's early customers. It's been buying Zambonis since the 1950s (though some teams, including the Washington Capitals, now use Olympia resurfacers). The Zamboni Company, which is run by Frank's son Richard and his grandson Frank, makes about 200 Zambonis a year. But they can't make them fast enough. There's a six-month waiting list! The machines are assembled by hand and cost up to $70,000.

A deluxe model Zamboni costs even more. The Zamboni 700 is the biggest Zamboni ever -- it weighs almost seven tons with a full tank of water. The Zamboni is big, but it's not fast. It has a top speed of about 9 mph.

Still, a Zamboni is cool to watch at any speed. As Charlie Brown once said in a Peanuts comic strip, "There are three things in life that are fun to watch: a rippling stream, a fire in the fireplace and a Zamboni going around and around."

FRED BOWEN will answer your sports questions today at 4 p.m. at the KidsPost Web site: www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost.

© 2001 The Washington Post Company