The Science Beneath the Ice
Before a hockey player takes the ice, an entirely different team has already been hard at work. Engineers, technicians, and ice specialists must create a playing surface that can withstand repeated skating, collisions, sharp turns, and changing environmental conditions. While fans focus on goals, saves, and faceoffs, there’s an incredible amount of science happening beneath the players’ skates.
Most students understand that water freezes when temperatures drop. They may have watched ice form in a freezer, experienced snow and ice during winter, or noticed a frozen puddle on the playground. However, creating a professional hockey rink requires much more than simply making water cold enough to freeze. Engineers must carefully manage heat transfer, monitor temperatures, design cooling systems, and maintain the physical properties of the ice throughout a game.
Those challenges are especially interesting when hockey moves outdoors. An indoor arena provides a relatively controlled environment, but an outdoor rink must account for changing air temperatures, sunlight, wind, and other conditions that can affect the playing surface.
For K–8 STEM educators, ice hockey offers an accessible way to introduce concepts such as states of matter, thermal energy, freezing, melting, insulation, temperature measurement, and engineering design. Students can investigate these ideas using everyday materials while connecting their discoveries to the technology that makes professional hockey possible.
At STEM Sports®, we believe students develop a stronger understanding of STEM when they can connect academic concepts to experiences they recognize. Our How to Teach STEM Through the Lens of Sports ebook emphasizes that hands-on learning gives students opportunities to experience scientific principles rather than simply read about them. The science behind an ice rink provides another opportunity to make those connections meaningful.
The 2026 NHL Heritage Classic Brings Ice Engineering Into the Spotlight
On October 25, 2026, the Winnipeg Jets and Montréal Canadiens will meet outdoors at Princess Auto Stadium for the NHL Heritage Classic. While the event celebrates hockey’s outdoor traditions, preparing the venue requires sophisticated modern engineering.
The NHL is transforming a Canadian Football League stadium into a professional hockey venue, complete with an NHL-caliber ice surface. An October 14 report from NHL.com detailed how the league’s mobile refrigeration system allows crews to create and maintain outdoor ice in a variety of climates.
The equipment includes a 53-foot refrigeration unit with approximately 300 tons of cooling capacity and a system using as much as 3,000 gallons of glycol-based coolant. Sensors monitor temperatures beneath the ice, at the playing surface, and throughout the refrigeration equipment, allowing operators to adjust the system as conditions change.
Those details reveal an important distinction between natural and engineered environments. A frozen pond depends primarily on surrounding weather conditions, while a professional rink uses technology to manage how heat moves through the surface.
For students, the Heritage Classic creates a fascinating question: How can engineers keep a hockey rink frozen even when the environment around it changes?
Answering that question requires an understanding of energy, matter, and the relationship between temperature and heat transfer.
Freezing Is Really About Energy
When students think about freezing, they often imagine that cold temperatures somehow enter water and turn it into ice. Scientists describe the process differently.
Freezing occurs when thermal energy is removed from liquid water, allowing the water molecules to form a more organized crystalline structure. Under ordinary atmospheric conditions, pure water freezes at approximately 0°C, or 32°F. However, the process involves more than reaching a particular temperature.
Water must release energy as it changes from a liquid into a solid. This energy exchange is called latent heat, and it explains why a substance can undergo a phase change while its temperature remains relatively constant.
The opposite happens when ice melts. Energy enters the ice, allowing its solid structure to change into liquid water. During melting, the energy entering the system is used primarily for the phase change rather than immediately increasing the temperature.
These concepts can be challenging when students encounter them only through textbook diagrams. Hockey gives them an immediate application because rink engineers must manage these energy exchanges continuously to maintain the desired playing surface.
Classroom Investigation 1: Watching a Phase Change
Recommended Grades: 3–8
STEM Focus: States of matter, temperature, energy transfer, observation, and measurement
Provide student groups with clear containers, ice cubes, thermometers, and stopwatches. Have students place equal amounts of ice into their containers and record the initial temperatures.
As the ice melts, students measure the temperature at consistent intervals while documenting how the amount of solid ice changes. Encourage them to observe whether the temperature changes as quickly during the melting process as it does after most of the ice has melted.
Younger students can create drawings showing the progression from solid ice to liquid water. Students in grades 3–5 can record temperatures and organize their observations into simple tables, while middle school students can create line graphs and investigate why the temperature of an ice-water mixture may remain near the melting point during the phase change.
Once the activity is complete, ask students to explain how their experiment relates to an outdoor hockey rink. What would happen if the rink continuously gained more heat than its cooling system could remove? How might engineers monitor the situation before the ice became unsuitable for skating?
This investigation helps students recognize that freezing and melting involve the transfer of energy, not simply the presence or absence of cold temperatures.
Understanding Heat Transfer in Sports
Heat naturally flows from regions of higher temperature toward regions of lower temperature. Engineers must understand how this transfer happens if they want to maintain a frozen playing surface.
There are three major mechanisms of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. All three can influence the conditions surrounding a hockey rink.
Conduction occurs when thermal energy moves through materials that are in contact. Heat can transfer between the ice and the materials beneath it, as well as between the ice and objects touching its surface.
Convection involves heat transfer through the movement of fluids, including air and liquids. Air moving above the ice can affect how quickly energy is exchanged between the playing surface and its surroundings. The movement of coolant through a refrigeration system also provides an example of how fluid circulation can transport thermal energy.
Radiation transfers energy through electromagnetic waves. Sunlight can warm an exposed ice surface even when the surrounding air feels relatively cool.
Understanding these processes is important because the best solution to one source of heat may not address another. Engineers must evaluate how different environmental conditions interact and determine which systems are needed to maintain the desired ice temperature.
Classroom Investigation 2: Which Material Transfers Heat Faster?
Recommended Grades: 3–8
STEM Focus: Thermal conductivity, material properties, experimental design, and data collection
Provide students with identical ice cubes and several flat surfaces made from different materials, such as metal, plastic, and wood. Allow all surfaces to reach the same room temperature before beginning the experiment.
Students place one ice cube on each surface and use a stopwatch to measure how quickly the cubes melt. To make the investigation more consistent, groups should use ice cubes of similar size and keep the materials under the same environmental conditions.
Students may discover that an ice cube melts faster on a metal surface than on a wooden or plastic surface. This result can initially seem surprising because metal often feels colder to the touch.
The explanation involves thermal conductivity. Metal generally transfers thermal energy more efficiently than wood or plastic, allowing energy from the surrounding material to reach the ice more quickly.
Students can record melting times, compare results, and explain how the different materials affected heat transfer. Middle school students can calculate averages from repeated trials and investigate why engineers must select materials based on their thermal properties.
The activity introduces an important engineering principle: a material’s performance depends on what it is designed to accomplish. Materials that transfer heat efficiently can be useful in certain applications, while materials that resist heat transfer are valuable in others.
Why Insulation Matters in Ice Rink Engineering
Insulation is another important concept in temperature management. Insulating materials reduce the rate at which thermal energy moves between regions, helping engineers control unwanted heat transfer.
Students already encounter insulation in everyday objects such as coolers, winter jackets, insulated water bottles, and lunch containers. Although these products serve different purposes, they are designed around a similar scientific principle: managing the movement of thermal energy.
An outdoor ice rink presents a more complicated challenge because engineers must account for multiple heat-transfer pathways. The system must remove heat from the ice while also limiting unnecessary heat entering from the surrounding environment.
The NHL’s Heritage Classic preparations illustrate why these decisions matter. Its mobile cooling system is designed to maintain the ice even as external conditions change, with sensors providing information about what is happening beneath and at the surface.
For students, the relationship between insulation and refrigeration provides an opportunity to think about engineering as a complete system. A cooling system can remove heat, but preventing unnecessary heat transfer can reduce the amount of work required to maintain the desired temperature.
Classroom Investigation 3: Build an Ice Protection System
Recommended Grades: 3–8
STEM Focus: Insulation, thermal energy, experimental design, and engineering optimization
Challenge students to design a container that keeps an ice cube from melting as quickly as possible.
Provide identical containers and a selection of classroom-safe materials such as felt, cardboard, cotton fabric, bubble wrap, and craft foam. Each group must choose how to insulate its container while working within a limited material budget.
Students place identical ice cubes into their containers and compare the amount of melting after a predetermined period. A control group uses an identical container without added insulation.
Encourage students to consider whether their design should minimize direct contact with warmer surfaces, reduce airflow around the ice, or use multiple layers of material.
For younger students, the activity can focus on comparing which design preserves the most ice. Older students can measure melted water, calculate differences between designs, and analyze whether adding more insulation always produces proportionally better results.
To make the investigation more realistic, introduce a design constraint. Students might have to reduce their material usage by 20% or redesign their container while maintaining the same level of performance.
These additional requirements encourage students to balance effectiveness, cost, and material efficiency, just as professional engineers do when designing real systems.
The Technology That Keeps Outdoor Hockey Possible
While insulation can slow heat transfer, a professional hockey rink also needs a way to remove thermal energy continuously.
Modern refrigeration systems accomplish this by circulating a coolant through equipment designed to absorb heat from one location and release it elsewhere. The system uses mechanical components, fluid circulation, and temperature controls to maintain the desired conditions.
At the 2026 Heritage Classic, the NHL’s mobile refrigeration equipment uses glycol-based coolant as part of that process. According to NHL officials, the system can adjust conditions to raise or lower temperatures within the ice as needed.
The refrigeration unit also includes sensors that provide information about surface temperature, temperatures beneath the ice, coolant conditions, and fluid flow. Engineers use those measurements to monitor how the system performs and make adjustments throughout the preparation process.
This creates another classroom connection: engineering systems rely on information as much as equipment.
Without temperature measurements, operators would have difficulty determining whether the ice was warming, cooling, or maintaining appropriate conditions. Sensors help turn those observations into useful data that can guide decisions.
For students, the connection extends beyond hockey. Similar temperature-monitoring systems are used in refrigerated transportation, food storage, manufacturing, environmental research, and other industries.
Classroom Investigation 4: Engineer a Miniature Hockey Rink
Recommended Grades: 4–8
STEM Focus: Engineering design, temperature monitoring, data analysis, and systems thinking
Present students with a fictional challenge: A school wants to build an outdoor hockey rink, but its location experiences changing temperatures throughout the day. The engineering team must design a system that helps protect the ice while using limited materials.
Students work in groups to create tabletop models using shallow trays, frozen ice slabs, cardboard, insulating materials, and thermometers.
Each team begins by identifying the design problem and establishing criteria for success. For example, the goal might be to maintain the lowest ice-surface temperature or preserve the greatest amount of ice over a 20-minute period.
Students can experiment with insulating the bottom of their trays, adding a shade structure, or modifying how air moves around their models. They should keep the initial ice quantity and testing conditions as consistent as possible.
Throughout the experiment, students record temperatures and observations. After comparing results, they identify which design features appeared to improve performance and which may have had little effect.
Middle school students can calculate temperature changes, compare rates, and evaluate whether their results support their original design decisions.
For an additional challenge, ask teams to redesign their solutions after receiving new information. Perhaps the rink must be moved into direct sunlight, or the available insulation budget has been reduced. Students must determine how to adapt while preserving as many performance goals as possible.
This investigation brings together several concepts from the earlier activities and mirrors the engineering design process students will encounter throughout their STEM education.
All ice experiments should use classroom-safe materials and be conducted on trays or protected surfaces to prevent spills and slippery floors. Students should not attempt to create working refrigeration systems or handle industrial coolants.
Connecting Ice Science to Real-World Data
Temperature monitoring introduces another opportunity to integrate mathematics into science and engineering.
Professional rink operators collect measurements that help them understand how the ice responds to different conditions. Students can practice similar reasoning by analyzing data from their miniature rink investigations.
For example, a class might compare two model rinks exposed to the same environment. One has additional insulation, while the other does not.
Students could record the following fictional temperatures:
Time | Rink A | Rink B |
Start | -5°C | -5°C |
5 minutes | -3°C | -2°C |
10 minutes | -1°C | 0°C |
15 minutes | 0°C | 1°C |
20 minutes | 0°C | 3°C |
Students can graph the data, identify patterns, and compare how quickly each model warmed. They should also consider how temperatures measured at different locations might differ, particularly as ice begins melting.
The important lesson is that a single measurement rarely tells the entire story. Engineers need multiple observations over time to understand how a system is behaving.
Students can use that principle to discuss why the NHL monitors temperatures at several locations rather than relying on one reading from the rink surface.
Bringing Ice Science Into the STEM Sports Classroom
The relationship between hockey and physical science is already embedded in STEM Sports® curriculum.
STEM Hockey includes modules such as Playing on Ice, Ice Time, and Advancements in Hockey. Students investigate the physical properties of ice, changes in matter, and the science behind the playing surface while also exploring forces, motion, and hockey equipment.
The curriculum is designed for grades 3–5 and 6–8, with standards-aligned lessons that combine classroom investigations and physical activity. The materials provide opportunities for students to understand hockey’s scientific principles without requiring prior experience playing the sport.
STEM Multi-Sport, Net Edition provides another connection by combining hockey lessons with lacrosse and tennis. Its curriculum includes Playing on Ice, allowing educators to introduce the science of frozen surfaces alongside other investigations involving energy, measurement, and motion.
For younger students, educators can adapt the introductory experiments into age-appropriate investigations focused on observing frozen and liquid water, comparing materials, and discussing why different objects are useful for different purposes.
These activities support learning objectives related to physical science, energy transfer, measurement, and engineering design. They also provide opportunities for students to practice collaboration, critical thinking, communication, and evidence-based reasoning.
Why Hockey Can Create New Opportunities for STEM Engagement
One of the most compelling aspects of sports-based learning is that students don’t need to be familiar with a sport to become interested in its science.
Sandra Hayes, a STEM teacher at F.K. White Middle School in Louisiana, discovered this when she expanded her STEM Sports curriculum to include hockey and lacrosse.
Hayes intentionally selected sports that weren’t particularly popular in her region. While some students were already experienced in basketball, soccer, or football, hockey was unfamiliar to nearly everyone.
That unfamiliarity created a more equitable learning environment. Students could approach the activities with similar levels of experience, ask questions, and develop their understanding together.
Hayes reports that students become highly engaged during STEM Sports lessons and often express disappointment when class ends. Some have even pursued additional STEM opportunities, including participation in robotics programs.
Sixth-grade science teacher Amy Rosengren has also seen how unfamiliar sports equipment can spark student curiosity. Her experience with STEM Hockey demonstrates that students can become interested in both the activity and the scientific principles behind it, even when hockey isn’t a sport they regularly play.
These experiences reinforce an important lesson for educators: sports-based STEM isn’t limited to students who identify as athletes.
The goal is to provide an engaging, relatable context that encourages students to investigate, collaborate, and discover.
A student who has never watched a professional hockey game can still understand the challenge of keeping ice frozen. That simple question can open the door to lessons involving temperature, energy, materials science, and engineering.
Supporting Learning Across Grade Levels
Ice rink STEM investigations can be adapted to meet different instructional needs throughout K–8.
For grades K–2, students can observe ice melting, describe changes between solids and liquids, and compare how ice behaves in different containers. Teachers can emphasize scientific vocabulary, observation, and simple cause-and-effect relationships.
For grades 3–5, students can measure temperatures, identify variables, compare insulating materials, and construct simple graphs. Activities can also introduce the engineering design process by asking students to create and improve systems that slow the melting of ice.
For grades 6–8, investigations can explore thermal conductivity, energy transfer, phase changes, measurement uncertainty, and engineering optimization. Students can analyze temperature data, calculate rates, evaluate design constraints, and explain how multiple systems interact to maintain an engineered ice surface.
For curriculum and instruction leaders, these activities offer connections to Next Generation Science Standards involving matter, energy, and engineering design. They also support mathematical practices such as measurement, graphing, proportional reasoning, and data interpretation.
Because the activities rely primarily on familiar materials, they can fit into traditional classrooms, STEM enrichment programs, after-school settings, and summer camps.
STEM Careers Behind the Ice
The engineering required to maintain a professional hockey rink introduces students to a variety of careers that may not immediately come to mind when they think about sports.
Mechanical engineers design and evaluate refrigeration systems. Electrical engineers develop control equipment and monitoring technology. Materials scientists investigate how surfaces behave under different conditions, while technicians install and maintain cooling systems.
Environmental specialists may evaluate energy consumption and resource use, while data analysts help interpret temperature measurements and identify opportunities for improved performance.
Sports facility managers must understand how all these systems work together to create safe, reliable environments for athletes and spectators.
These careers reinforce a central message of the STEM Sports approach: students who love sports have opportunities to participate in the industry far beyond becoming professional athletes.
The next great innovation in hockey may not come from someone scoring a goal. It may come from an engineer developing a more efficient way to keep the ice frozen.
The STEM Beneath Every Hockey Game
When the Winnipeg Jets and Montréal Canadiens take the ice for the 2026 NHL Heritage Classic, fans will see an outdoor hockey game celebrating the sport’s traditions. Behind the scenes, engineers and technicians will have spent weeks preparing the playing surface and monitoring the systems needed to keep it ready for competition.
For K–8 students, that preparation reveals a world of STEM learning opportunities.
Freezing becomes an investigation into states of matter. Melting introduces energy transfer. Insulation becomes an engineering challenge, while refrigeration demonstrates how mechanical systems can control temperature. Sensors and measurements provide data students can analyze to make informed decisions.
Most importantly, these connections show students that STEM is part of the world they experience every day. The concepts they investigate with an ice cube and a thermometer are connected to the same scientific principles used to prepare a professional hockey rink.
With STEM Sports®, even the ice beneath a player’s skates can become an opportunity for students to explore science, solve problems, and discover new possibilities.