Canes center ice logo changed!

As the season rapidly approaches, the ice crew at the RBC Center is busy building the ice. They are currently in the process of painting the logos and lines and whatnot. The guys at Icethetics already wrote about this, so I'll give them a glove tap, but for the second season in a row, Carolina will have a different center ice logo than their standard "sightless eye".

Here's the view from the RBC Center webcam:


Clearly, this is the "secondary" logo, the storm warning flag tied to a hockey stick. It is the same logo which will be the crest on the alternate sweaters. Those sweaters will be officially shown to the public at 12:30 pm on Wednesday. By now, we all have a pretty good idea of what they're going to be. Unfortunately, I won't be attending the press conference.

Last year, the Canes used their special "10th anniversary" logo, a stylized roman numeral ten. This season, they'll use the "storm warning" logo. The following year will be the 10th anniversary of the RBC Center, so there may be yet another special center ice logo.

In other news, one of my Scrabble™-geek acquaintances will be on JEOPARDY tonight. Of course these shows are taped well in advance of the air-date, but he won't say how he did. He's kind of a jackass, so I'm secretly hoping that he comes in third. When I was in college, a friend's mother was on JEOPARDY, and after the taping, she didn't even tell her kids how she did. They had to watch the show to find out that she came in third. Anyway, I'll be looking for Kurt to do just that tonight.

Busy day at the RBC Center

The Hurricanes share their arena with the NC State Men's basketball team. A couple of times a season, there will be a basketball/hockey twi-night doubleheader. Today is one of those days. NC State finished their basketball game at about 4:45 and the Canes game starts at 7:00. The ice needs to be ready well in advance of that for the skatearound.

The changeover crew busts their collective butt to pull up the basketball floor, reconfigure the lower seating bowl, remove the buffer between the ice and the basketball floor, reinstall the dasher boards and the glass, put up the protective netting, then adjust the temperature of the building. Unless I'm terribly mistaken, the temperature is maintained at 68 degrees for a basketball game and 63 degrees for a hockey game. There are other details too, but this is a lot to accomplish in less than two hours. I think they once did the whole thing in under 45 minutes.

I don't want to think about the nightmare that the parking lot becomes while they empty it and refill it in quick fashion.

Right now, I'm keeping an eye on the RBC Center webcam, which updates once every 60 seconds. It's pretty enthralling.