Zamboni made Canada debut 71 years ago in Montreal

MONTREAL -- Fans arrived at the Montreal Forum on March 10, 1955, hoping for an offensive slugfest between the Canadiens and visiting Toronto Maple Leafs, a ferocious rivalry steeped in bitterness.

What they got instead was an unsatisfying 0-0 tie and the NHL Canadian-rink debut of a newfangled ice-resurfacing machine whose arrival didn’t merit as much as a single word in the following day’s newspaper reports.

Two things were guaranteed Tuesday when the Maple Leafs visited Bell Centre to play the Canadiens: the game wouldn’t end in a tie of any fashion, and two Zambonis would resurface the ice.

On that  night 71 years ago, Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante turned aside 24 Toronto shots -- unofficially, as shots on goal wouldn’t be an NHL statistic until 1959-60 -- while the Maple Leafs’ Harry “Apple Cheeks” Lumley stopped all 15 Montreal shots that came his way.

In 1955 portraits, Canadiens goalie Jacques Plante in his team’s Montreal Forum dressing room and Toronto’s Harry “Apple Cheeks” Lumley in a publicity shot at Maple Leaf Gardens.

A United Press wire story headlined the contest as “listless,” saying that the contest “had 14,332 fans calling for action during much of the 60 minutes.

“Play was held up several times to clear the ice of debris. … There was intermittent stamping for action and the game-end departure of the Toronto players was greeted with lusty booing.”

Referee Bill Chadwick called 11 minor penalties, all in the first 40 minutes. 

“Six of the sentences went to the Leafs,” the wire story reported, “but their defensive units harried, hounded and checked the most feared power-play in hockey to such an extent that the Canadiens were never a serious threat to goalkeeper Harry Lumley.”

Most of Toronto’s shots came from long range or wide angles, but Plante was sharp especially against Ted Kennedy.

An early 1940s prototype of the Zamboni ice-resurfacing machine that would revolutionize NHL ice maintenance.

The dissatisfaction of the impatient fans was such that they took to launching debris onto the ice: peanuts in the shell, coins, programs and toe-rubbers (half-galoshes stretched from toe to heel over the sole of men’s shoes).

Other projectiles included “two slightly used pigs’ feet and an over-ripe lemon,” reported Red Burnett in the Toronto Daily Star.

That prompted the Canadiens to revisit Forum security, Stanley Cup Playoff ticket ads including a warning to fans how miscreant behavior would be handled.

“We have been forced to suspend and cancel 12 subscribers' tickets due to the fact they insisted on smoking and throwing things on the ice,” the ad read. “Please bear in mind that the subscribers are responsible for the action of people who occupy their seats. We urge you to protect your playoff tickets and your renewal for next year.”

A 1940s Frank J. Zamboni & Co. ad, promoting its new ice-resurfacing machine, and a 2014 Canada Post stamp celebrating the modern machine with a Canadiens paint scheme.

The warning appeared in editions of March 16. As fate would have it, that was the night before the infamous Richard Riot consumed the Forum and the city, the Canadiens forfeiting their game to the Detroit Red Wings when fans revolted over a historic suspension that had been meted out to superstar Maurice “Rocket” Richard.

Lost in the unhappiness of a 0-0 tie was the work of a converted Jeep that would revolutionize maintenance of NHL rinks.

Since the landmark March 10, 1955, match, the Canadiens have played 3,011 games, regular season and playoffs, at the Forum and Molson/Bell Centre. With a Zamboni resurfacing Forum ice, Montreal had a stunning 1,200 wins against 370 losses and 211 ties; at their arena that opened in March 1996, they’ve gone 604-465-46-115.

Invented in the early 1940s by Frank J. Zamboni in Paramount, California, the ice-resurfacing machine rumbled onto the Forum rink about a week after its NHL debut at Boston Garden.

No longer would a crew of eight to 10 men -- usually ushers -- shovel the rink and flood it with hot-water barrels that they hauled end to end. The “mechanical monster,” as the Zamboni company affectionately called their four-wheeled beast, was a one-man army, cleaning and reconditioning a 200 by 85-foot sheet of ice in six or seven minutes.

Montreal Forum ice being prepared in the 1930s by a crew using a tractor, shovels and a hose.

“The real beauty of the machine is that it takes only one man to operate,” said Forum superintendent Jim Hunter. “It also gives the ice a much smoother finish than a crew of men working with the present hot-water barrels.”

The machine was primed for Forum use after two days of trial runs.

“First, the machine cuts the ice surface to the desired depth by means of a seven-foot blade under the jeep,” read a Montreal Gazette story published the day before the debut.

“Then it scoops up the loose snow and deposits it in a cab with the aid of a conveyer belt. Finally, it provides an extremely smooth finish to the surface with a fine layer of hot water.”

Montreal Forum ushers shovel the ice, a hand-pulled barrel laying a strip of hot water on the rink behind them in a 1940s photo.

The 5,400-pound machine, the Canadian version selling for about $10,000, featured a tank that held 190 gallons of hot water. The Forum’s E Model was the newest of 29 produced in Frank Zamboni’s California plant; only one other was in Canada, north of Montreal at a college rink in Laval, the other 27 scattered throughout the U.S.

Zamboni had conceived the idea of an ice-resurfacer in 1942, operating a California rink in Paramount. By trial and error, he developed a machine that appealed so much to figure-skating champion Sonja Henie, who trained at Paramount, that she took it on the road for her ice shows.

Orders soon poured in and before long the machine was in use across the U.S. in the Ice Capades, Holiday on Ice shows and in nearly 20 hockey arenas.

By 1961, only the Forum, Boston Garden and Olympia Stadium in Detroit were using a machine, New York’s Madison Square Garden, Chicago Stadium and Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens still using the shovel brigade and water barrels between periods. But they’d follow suit, too.

Today, the Zamboni and others produced by rival companies are standard equipment in virtually every serious arena worldwide.

Veteran Montreal Canadiens ice-crew member Keith Tombs, who’s been driving a Zamboni machine since 1968, at Bell Centre on March 10, 2020, the 65th anniversary of the historic first appearance of the company’s ice-resurfacer on Montreal NHL ice.

Some NHL teams have contests to give fans the chance to ride in a passenger seat during ice-resurfacing laps, and in 1990, Martin Zellar and his band Gear Daddies recorded “I Want to Drive The Zamboni,” a cult hit that often is played in arenas as the machine works its mechanical magic between periods. There is also a hockey-themed rock band called The Zambonis.

On Tuesday, Keith Tombs will steer one of Bell Centre’s two Zambonis around the rink following warm-up and during intermissions of the Canadiens-Maple Leafs game that would not end 0-0 and probably won’t see any toe-rubbers on the rink.

Tombs, in his early 80s, has been driving various machines at the Forum, then Bell Centre, since 1968, and today could probably resurface one of the NHL’s best sheets of ice blindfolded.

As a summer job, he helped to rebuild the Forum’s ice plant during the arena’s massive renovation in 1968 and had planned to return to school that fall. Superintendent Jim Hunter, Montreal’s first Zamboni-machine driver, wouldn’t hear of it.

Now, nearly 60 years later, Tombs is still turning laps.

“I won the Stanley Cup 12 times at the Forum,” he said with great pride during a 2014 interview.

You needn’t ask him today whether he hopes to be behind the wheel for lucky No. 13, which would be No. 25 in the Canadiens’ storied history.

Top photo: A March 9, 1955 Montreal Gazette story announces the arrival of the Zamboni-patented machine that would make its Montreal NHL ice debut the following night.