The thunderous crash of shattered Plexiglas reverberated through the empty rows of seats at CN Centre.
A shot from a Spokane Chiefs' player in the morning skate Saturday had claimed yet another pane of glass on the end boards of the rink, bringing the season casualty rate up to at least a baker's dozen.
Luckily, nobody was sitting within range of the broken glass and Andy Beesley was on the scene as the cleanup crew arrived to pick up the pieces. The alarming number of incidents of broken glass at the rink has become a major concern for Beesley, manager of CN Centre and community arenas, and the most likely culprit appears to be a defective batch of glass the city purchased from the manufacturer.
"We're up to 13 or 14 pieces of glass in total for this season -- normally we can expect four to eight in a season, so this is definitely an unusual year," said Beesley.
"About six pieces ago we were at the point where we said we just have to solve the problem, whatever it takes. We've replaced everything we could possible replace -- the sills, the gaskets, the clips at the top. At least two other Western Hockey League arenas have seen some increases in glass breakage, so what that leads us to think is we've actually got some bad glass. Saskatoon had a horrific problem several years ago that was attributed to bad glass and they eventually switched out the glass with new stuff and it solved the problem."
Beesley said the problem has not cropped up at the other five city arenas, where the glass is never taken out for other events such as concerts, a regular occurrence at CN Centre.
"The common thought is when you have to move it in and out for conversions it weakens it, but that's not the case," said Beesley. "There are only so many components to it. There's the gaskets, the sills, the clips and the quality of the glass, and we've eliminated it down to what we think is just bad glass. So we've been replacing all the suspect pieces with new glass.
"However, each pane is worth between $600 and $1,000, so it's very expensive. If we were a super-rich NHL team we'd just take all the glass out and replace it, that's not realistic in a municipally-owned building. So what we are doing is taking the key pieces out of the end zones and we now have new glass from a different manufacturer and different distributor in both end zones and we'll keep replacing the glass as we can."
Nine of the broken-pane incidents have happened before or during Cougar games. One of them, Oct. 24, left WHL goal judge Wayne Ridsdale with a gash on his head that required a hospital visit.
"This is something we've taken very seriously because it is embarrassing and unacceptable to have that many pieces of broken glass," said Beesley. "It's a huge safety concern and we're really worried about glass hitting fans. It's also a safety concern to our staff. It's a dangerous job to replace a piece of glass that weighs hundreds of pounds in the middle of a game or in the warmup."
