It seems that more wacky news stories crop up at this time of the season.
In Manitoba there was some strange action on the ice rink this weekend that required the police to drop by the local hockey rink in the rural town of Ste Anne about 50 kilometres southeast of Winnipeg.
Two regional bantam boys hockey teams (age 13-14) were battling it out in the Ste Anne arena when a different type of action occurred.
Normally the Zamboni comes out between periods, circles around the rink to smooth the ice surface and exits. But this time was a little different.
Various reports say the driver hit the gate on the way out breaking off pieces of the gate and some bits off the machine.
People in the stands say he then drove the machine erratically and hit the boards occasionally.
A piece of something also got stuck under the machine causing a ridge on the ice with every pass.
According to some reports, when questioned about the ice surface, the driver got rather upset and became angry. There was some suspicion the driver was drunk. Police were called and later took the man into custody.
He has been charged with refusing a breathalyzer, impaired driving, and resisting arrest.
The third period of the game was postponed until Monday night when the ice was repaired.
Not the first time
Surprisingly it would not be the first time a Zamboni driver would be charged with drunk driving on the slow moving machines.
A man in Fargo, North Dakota, was sentenced to nine days in jail after he was driving erractically and banging his machine into the boards in a girls hockey game in January.
Another man was arrested in Apple Valley Minnesota in 2012 and charged with drunk driving a Zamboni.
A man who had been drinking broke into an arena in Oklahoma City and took a Zamboni for a very brief ride around before security caught him.
Although there are now several companies making ice-resurfacing machines, they’ve all come to known by the generic “zamboni”. They’re called Zamboni’s after the original inventor and manufacturer Frank Zamboni who made the first such machine in 1949 in California
Additional info- sources
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