Just before noon on Wednesday, five Gulls players skated through clouds of artificial fog that hung above the rink at Valley View Casino Center like an impending storm. Most of the lights in the arena were off, and a spotlight shone on the ice to make the fog seem thicker and the scene more epic for another post-practice photo shoot.

The fog, pumped out by a machine on one end of the rink, was desired. Four days earlier, during the Gulls season opener, it was not.

Much of Saturday’s game, which the Gulls won, 4-2, against the Grand Rapids Griffins, seemed to be played in a perpetual haze, as unseasonably warm temperatures -- they hovered in the lower 90s -- outside of the arena made for a foggy game inside of it.

During the second period, the referees stopped the game to discuss whether it was safe to play on.


They decided it was. “We talked to the referee, Coach Dallas Eakins said Wednesday. “As long as we kept lifting it, everything was good. We certainly would never put anybody in harm’s way, but it was just a very simple remedy.”

That remedy took the form of players skating around in circles on the ice during game breaks in an attempt to dissipate the fog.

“You can’t really ever get rid of it: It’s just going to keep coming back,” center Antoine Laganiere said. “That’s the only way, is to kind of skate around and get it to lift a bit.”

From the fan’s perspective above the ice, it looked like the game was being played in the middle of a cloud. On the ice, it was even worse.


“When you’re down on the ice level, you’re looking through all the fog, so it’s a lot more dense than, like, from above,” defenseman Joe Piskula said. “Like, you’d look up at the JumboTron and it didn’t look bad up there because you’re looking down into it. But when you’re looking through a whole rink of it, it gets pretty thick.”

So thick, Laganiere said, that it was difficult to, well, see. Players had to constantly wipe down their visors. The puck and other players were a challenge to find and distinguish. The fog dictated all.

“When it was getting bad,” Piskula said, “you couldn’t see from the blue line to the net.”

So Gulls made the most of it. They shot from farther distances than they normally would and relied on simplicity. “I’m a defenseman, but I would think for a goalie it could have gotten real difficult,” Piskula said. “We were even saying: ‘Try to use it to our advantage: Take long shots. Maybe the goalie wouldn’t be able to see it.’


“It seemed like old-time hockey,” he added. “It felt like we went back in time about 30 years.”

Eakins remembers those days, because he lived them. As a kid in Canada, he would play hockey during the summers, and fog would creep onto the ice. He soon learned how to get rid of it.

“We did exactly what we would have done back then: On the whistles you get all the players get around a circle, you lift the fog, and away you go again,” Eakins said.

Eakins and his players, for their part, seemed relatively unconcerned about the fog or it being a problem for the rest of the season. It is, they said, a natural phenomenon over which they have little control.


“I’m new to the area, but I would guess that its been unseasonably warm. And with a cool rink you’re going to get that sometimes,” said Eakins, who after Saturday’s game called the fog “a hiccup along the way.”

“I just think that’s part of the deal playing hockey in Southern California: You’re going to have those nights like that every once in a while. I don’t foresee that being a problem long-term.”

Neither do the Gulls. They brought in a rink specialist this week to inspect the ice, and they believe that there will be significantly less fog in future games.

Starting Friday. The Gulls play the Bakersfield Condors, the Edmonton Oilers’ American Hockey League affiliate, at 7:05 p.m. at Valley View before a three-game road trip next week. After months of electricity and anticipation surrounding the season opener, the Gulls have embraced some sense of normalcy, of routine, during their first full week of the regular season.


“It’s business as usual,” Eakins said. “I’m a real process-minded person and a very process-minded coach, and I like to keep our players in the mindset of: ‘Yesterday is gone; what can we do today to be better? What are we going to do today?’ And then when we get to tomorrow it’s, ‘What are we going to today?’”

The Condors, who on Saturday lost, 5-0, to the Ontario Reign (whom the Gulls beat in their final preseason game), are big and talented, Eakins said. And he would know: Eakins’ last coaching job was for the Oilers.

“I quickly want to move on,” he said. “We’re not to sit around and bang our pom-poms together because we won a game.”

At the end of Wednesday’s practice, the rink was fog-free. Players shuffled off the ice and devoured submarine sandwiches.


A few minutes later, though, the lights were shut off and the five players were back on the ice for the photo shoot. The fog machine sprayed out thick clouds, and the rink was hazy again, perhaps for one of the last times this season.

O’Ree to be honored

During the first intermission of Friday’s game, the team will honor Gulls legend Willie O’Ree, who broke the NHL’s color barrier in 1958 and played for the Gulls from 1967 to 1974. During the ceremony, the Gulls will unveil a “Gulls jersey-themed O’Ree banner,” according to a team release.

“I have told Gulls management and players that nothing would make me happier than to have current and future Gulls continue to wear #20, the number I wore while with the Gulls,” O’Ree said, according to the release. “I am excited that you fans will get to see the great #20 both on the ice and in the rafters this year and for years to come.”