It's 8:30 a.m. and before most people's morning coffee has kicked in, ice manager
Stephen McGrath has been at work for hours, getting the Family Sports Center Ice Arena ready.
"From 5 in the morning until 1 the next morning, we have programs on the ice," he said.
It pays to be an early bird. In one day, hundreds of people will descend on the center's two rinks and rip the ice apart for a regional youth hockey tournament drawing players from as far as Texas and Utah, and McGrath is marshaling six departments to prepare for everything.
A shipment has arrived: boxes upon boxes of programs for the upcoming tourney. Another Family Sports staffer shouts, "Yo, Blu!" using the nickname McGrath has sported since college.
When McGrath isn't running the show as go-to guy for everything going on, he's working with the ice staff to hold everything together. The Avalanche rink and Hamilton rink, where Olympic skater
Scott Hamilton used to practice, host hockey leagues, recreational skates, competitions and Avalanche practices, so it's important to be on top of his game.
"If we don't have good ice, people don't come skate," he said.
Taking care of the ice is no simple feat. The rink consists of a base of sand and layers upon layers of ice. All of this rests on a network of pipes below.
"It's a big freezer," McGrath says. "There's about nine miles of piping underneath the ice surface."
To give the rink its color, the staff actually sandwiches a layer of paint between the sheets of ice. It's not just the lines and goal areas, though. "The white surface that you see out there is white paint," he says.
McGrath and his staff have the Sisyphean task of resurfacing the ice on the Zamboni.
"It handles pretty much like a truck, but it only takes tight turns going right," McGrath said.
The Zamboni scours the ice to even out gouges carved in by armies of ice skaters, cleans the surface then puts down a new layer that will inevitably be chopped up by the next skaters. This battle against inevitability will happen on both of the ice center's rinks every one or two hours every day.
"We don't have much downtime," McGrath said.