In her youth, Ali Murdock yearned for a career in hockey.
She went on to earn a Bachelor’s degree in business management before participating in a Tampa Bay Lightning Fantasy camp through the organization’s community hockey program. That’s when former ice operations manager Thomas Miracle approached her at the camp, asking her to work on the team’s ice crew.
Now some 10 years later, Murdock is fulfilling lifelong aspirations in the NHL.
Murdock helps guard and refresh the ice surface at AMALIE Arena for the Lightning, working each day as assistant manager of ice operations. Murdock handles ice maintenance of all kinds, ranging from resurfacing, repairs, planning and transitioning for non-hockey events.
She worked at one of the NHL’s most prestigious events earlier this month, serving on the ice crew that helped build the arena for the 2025 Winter Classic at Wrigley Field in Chicago.
It was Murdock’s first time working an NHL Winter Classic.
“It’s an honor to be asked to be on that crew. They only pick people they know are gonna work hard and be fun,” Murdock said. "It’s a big honor.”
Murdock helped orchestrate the 2022 Stadium Series in Nashville, an outdoor game in which the Lightning beat the Nashville Predators 3-2 at Nissan Stadium.
A Winter Classic, though, is a special opportunity, Murdock said. She was part of a 16-person crew that helped pull off this year’s Winter Classic on Dec. 31.
“It was really good ice,” she said of Wrigley Field. “And it’s really cool because a lot of it is hose flooded, but then we had a lot of rain, too. So a lot of it is rain.”
That outdoor arena was used both by the NHL for the Winter Classic and the Big Ten hockey conference for the 2025 Frozen Confines: Big Ten Hockey Series. Murdock’s brother, Kevin Murdock, is an assistant coach for the University of Wisconsin Badgers men’s hockey team, who also played on the ice.
Tampa Bay’s Murdock mentioned her hopes of working a Winter Classic to her brother this summer and had forgotten about it until the season heated up again.
Derek King, who works as the NHL’s senior director of facilities operations, led the charge in orchestrating the outdoor game. He was at AMALIE Arena earlier this season for a game, when he asked Murdock to leave the room so he could speak to ice operations manager Patrick Jesso about Murdock working this year’s outdoor event.
Murdock joined the Winter Classic staff, which is made up of professionals from teams across the league as well as specialists who have worked every outdoor game in recent NHL history.
Murdock spent 17 days in Chicago, a few less than some other helpers due to the Lightning home schedule. There was still plenty of work to be done when she arrived.
"When you show up, it's an empty field,” she said.
Staff place a plastic flooring on top of the field to establish a sturdy foundation for the rink. They started with a roughly 18-inch stage decking floor as the rink’s base before using a glycol system to fill the ice surface and add the arena boards.
A truck from an ice plant parked on the street outside Wrigley Field, closing off a traffic lane to help feed the glycol system.
The team protects the ice during the day with a sheet similar to a vehicle’s polarized windshield.
“Here (AMALIE) for the most part you know what you’re working with. There could be some issues here and there that pop up, but outdoors, anything can happen,” Murdock said. "The sun absolutely destroys the ice. Anywhere there’s any kind of color, bluelines, any logos, the sun will melt it no matter how cold it is.”
Rain can complicate the picture, too. A light rain might freeze fast enough to benefit by flooding the ice for the crew, but when it rains too heavily for the ice plant to keep up, the crew has to push excess water off.
Murdock spent 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. the morning of the Winter Classic sweeping excess rain off the ice surface.
Murdock: Lightning job a ‘Dream come true’
This year marks Murdock’s 10th with the Lightning. Her first Winter Classic followed a lifelong path to the NHL.
Murdock first began skating in Kenosha, Wisconsin when she was three years old. Her family moved to Bradenton, Florida when she was six, and Murdock grew up playing co-ed hockey.
She eventually played for the all-girls Team Florida program as well as the TPH Thunder of Atlanta, Georgia and the St. Louis Lady Blues.
Murdock always wanted to work in the NHL. More importantly, she wanted that career to come with the Tampa Bay Lightning, her hometown team.
“I knew I wanted to work in hockey, but specifically for the Lightning,” she said. “The Lightning have always been my team.”
Murdock first began working for Tampa Bay in 2015, when she was shoveling snow part-time for the ice crew. Her tenure began at the tail end of the regular season, just in time for the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
“The intensity in the building, I honestly remember thinking like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. This is a lot of pressure.’ And now I’m like, ‘It was shoveling snow.’ It was just the intensity of the building and how serious everyone was because it was the Cup Final.”
Murdock was the first full-time female Zamboni driver in the NHL. Multiple NHL teams now have full-time female ice crew members.
This year’s Winter Classic was another first for Murdock, who is living her dream as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning.
“It’s really a dream come true. I wanted to work for the Lightning. I wanted to work in hockey. I’m doing it. I’ve worked my way up and I like to look back and be like, little Ali would think this is so cool. And it’s still really cool.”
