MIDDLETON, Wis. — Inside a dark ice rink on a warm Saturday morning in August, Ryan Suter is on all fours ripping out sections of rubber glued to the concrete.

Since returning home in May after the Minnesota Wild ended their season with another playoff loss to the Chicago Blackhawks, Suter has had his eye on the rubber that wraps around the ice rink in this Madison suburb.

The rubber was too dirty, old and tattered, he thought, and now that the rink carries the name of Ryan’s late father, Bob, everything needs to be perfect.

So on a sunny day, Suter, his younger brother Garrett and a couple of teenagers who play for Garrett’s junior hockey team here removed the rubber from the floor, power-washed it out behind the rink and stacked it for use later.

The work started at 6 a.m., and by late morning, sweat was pouring off Ryan Suter’s forehead even in the cold rink. Garrett looked at Ryan and wondered aloud how many other NHL players would spend their summers this way, working 10 hours a day in a dark ice rink.

Ryan thought about that, if only for a moment. After an 82-game grind — and, in Suter’s case, 10 postseason games — NHL players tend to devote summers to relaxing and recharging. Not Suter, who shook his head at the thought and went back to work on the flooring.

“I don’t have the patience for golf or fishing,” he said.

A SPECIAL PLACE

A trip to south-central Wisconsin reveals just how adored the Suters are in these parts.

“They’re hockey royalty here,” said Tom Garrity, managing partner of the Madison Capitols, a Tier 1 junior hockey team.

It also offers a glimpse of Ryan Suter that is rarely seen. The Wild’s top defenseman doesn’t conduct as many interviews as most NHL stars and has managed to stay out of the media’s spotlight despite the 13-year, $98 million contract he signed, along with Zach Parise, in the summer of 2012.

Suter, 30, a 10-year NHL veteran, doesn’t flaunt his charitable work, and he declines all requests for interviews at his home. He is so private that not even the Wild’s behind-the-scenes TV show, “Becoming Wild,” is allowed to see his house.

But a visit to his hometown reveals how dedicated he is to ensuring the Madison Capitols and the Capitol Ice Arena — recently renamed Bob Suter’s Capitol Ice Arena — remain successful.

Ryan owns the arena that carries his father’s name, and Garrett runs it and coaches the under-18 team that calls the rink home. Their mother Diane works part-time in hockey administration.

“I lay awake some mornings and think about the stuff that we have to do here because I just want this place to be special,” Ryan said. “My dad ran it for a long time, and it’s kind of our baby. It’s kind of a home away from home for a lot of kids, so you want it to be nice for them.”

Ryan seems to run the rink the way he plays on the blue line — meticulously and without distraction. He is a perfectionist, family members say, who can’t relax until everything is just right.

Here, Ryan is at home. His struggle is feeling as comfortable with parts of his other world as an NHL all-star defenseman.

For nine months a year, Suter is an NHL player with a multimillion-dollar contract. He takes quite a bit of ribbing from friends and teammates for his lack on interest in fashion, expensive cars and the bling that seem to go hand in hand with well-paid professional athletes.

At home in Wisconsin, he doesn’t like to be seen with even the small treats he allows himself to have.

Eleven years ago, with money from his rookie contract, Ryan purchased a Ford Excursion SUV. For 11 years, it was the only car he bought for himself. Finally, this summer, his wife Becky, who is from Bloomington, talked him into trading up.

He settled on an Escalade, mostly because it gives him the room he needs for his three kids and his hockey gear. But he parks it behind the rink here to keep it out of sight.

“I feel guilty driving that car,” Ryan said, “because my dad never had that.”

‘A SPECIAL GUY’

Ryan grew up idolizing his father.

He wore No. 20 because that was his dad’s number. He wanted to play for the University of Wisconsin because his dad played for the Badgers.

When he was too young to play on the 10-year-old team Bob coached, 5-year-old Ryan sported a “trainer” badge on his jacket and wore a fanny pack with tape and scissors in order to be a part of the team.

Bob Suter was a member of the 1980 Olympic hockey team, coached by Herb Brooks, that delivered one of the biggest upsets in modern sports history when it beat the Soviets and followed that by winning the gold medal in Lake Placid, N.Y.

But Bob never treated that as a life-changing event. He left his gold medal out on his bedroom dresser, and Ryan often brought it to school for show-and-tell, sometimes leaving it in his classroom desk drawer for days at a time.

Bob opened a sporting goods store, but his real passion was the Madison Capitols youth hockey organization that his father, Marlowe, co-founded.

For parts of four decades, Bob Suter was the face of hockey in Wisconsin. He coached future stars such as siblings Phil and Amanda Kessel, former Gophers who grew up in the Suter’s backyard playing pickup games against Ryan and Garrett.

Bob Suter went out of his way to coach anyone interested in hockey. He slept at the rink many nights to flood the ice surface every two hours and make sure it was ready for the early morning skates.

“He was a special guy,” Ryan said.

When Bob took his sons out to lunch or dinner in Madison, their table often was mobbed by people who wanted to thank Bob or just hear him talk for a few minutes.

“I will never be what he was in Madison,” Ryan said. “And that’s pretty special to say about him. It shows what kind of guy he was because it wasn’t just hockey; it was everything. I honestly feel if he hadn’t won a gold medal, he still would’ve had the same big impact that he did.”

FROM FATHER TO SON

Every day over the summer, Ryan and Garrett walked through the lobby of the arena where their father suffered the heart attack that killed him almost one year ago, on Sept. 9, 2014. He was 57.

When Bob ran the arena, he handled scheduling and paperwork the old-school way, with pen and paper. Since his passing, the operation has gone digital. His sons rehabbed the bathroom and storage areas, built a bar and seating area upstairs for parents — with a view of both rinks — and are finalizing a weight room for the players.

Suter jokes with Wild teammates that when he reports to training camp on Sept. 17, it will feel like a vacation.

“At times (working here) gets stressful and wears you down,” he said. “But at the end of the day, seeing the kids out here and seeing the look on people’s faces when they see what we’ve done makes it worth it.”

In some ways, Suter’s NHL career has been a happy accident. While those around him told him he could make it big, the NHL was never part of his dreams.

He wanted to play for the Badgers, like his dad, then come back here and run the rink with him.

“That’s all I wanted, was to be like him,” he said. “And I would’ve been perfectly fine with that.”

During a two-hour interview at the rink, Ryan reflected on his career and his children who will carry the Suter name in this town.

Suter will be 40 by the time he completes the final 10 years of his Wild contract. His oldest child, Brooks, will be 14 then. Suter doesn’t know if he will retire then, but he knows he wants to have the time to watch his son play for the Madison Capitols.

Almost on cue, 4-year-old Brooks ran over and gave his dad a hug goodbye. Suter’s wife, Becky, was picking him up after a morning at the rink with his dad.

Before Brooks left, he had a final request for his father.

“Can you bring me home a Madison Capitols bag?” he asked.

HOMETOWN HERO

Walking around Middleton with Ryan is probably a little bit like what it must have been like walking around these parts with Bob.

Suter enters The Village Green, a pub down the road from the arena that he frequents for lunch, and gets a handshake from the chef. The waitress knows Brooks’ order of a lemonade before his sits down. Patrons wave at Ryan, but no one asks for an autograph or photo.

“People here don’t come to see Ryan because he’s a hockey player,” Diane Suter said. “They just know him as Ryan.”

Ryan has been on record since joining the Wild that he doesn’t always eat the healthiest of foods, a sort of throwback to a time before Atkins and gluten-free diets. Between Ryan’s cup of seafood gumbo and a double cheeseburger with French fries, he gets a phone call from Parise. The two Wild stars talk every day.

They’re optimistic about the upcoming season, Ryan said, even if the returning team is pretty much the same team as last year. That continuity is what it takes sometimes, Ryan countered, offering the 2015 Stanley Cup champion Blackhawks as evidence.

After lunch, it was back to the rink.

During his final couple weeks at the rink, Suter skates with the teenagers in camps as they prepare for the Capitols’ upcoming season. Ryan wears full gear and a white Madison Capitols sweater — No. 21 because Bob Suter’s No. 20 is retired here.

Even against the teenagers, Ryan rarely holds back. Occasionally, if there’s a new kid to the program, he might shy away from contact during a physical drill with the NHL veteran. When that happens, Ryan usually levels a crushing hit, and that ends any anxiety the players have about skating with an NHL all-star.

‘HIS LEGACY’

Ryan used to spend most of his summers working on his 120-acre farm, where mowing the lawn takes four full days and the shed serves as Ryan’s personal toy box, stuffed with lawn equipment that would rival that of a small municipality.

But without his dad around, Ryan has spent more time at the rink this summer.

Diane said her son always has been this way, devoted to chores and labor until the job is done. He took over lawn-mowing duties as a kid because he liked the look of a well-trimmed yard. He shoveled and releveled the backyard rink because he appreciated a smooth ice surface. He was driving the Zamboni at his father’s rink before he drove a car.

He only relinquished chain saw duties on the farm when he signed his big deal with the Wild.

But this summer, Diane said, Ryan has been working harder than ever.

“This is his dad’s legacy,” she said. “They don’t want people to forget their dad.”

That’s why, in part, they’ve continued his dream. Bob’s No. 20 is painted on the ice here, and it hangs from the wall at the rink and in the bar upstairs. In the lobby is a mural celebrating Bob’s career.

Lately, they’ve been talking about adding a “Parking for No. 20 Only” sign in Bob’s old parking spot.

“He’s always on their minds,” Diane said. “You talk to them about Bob and they still tear up. It’s only been a year.”

Ryan signed his mega contract with Minnesota in part so he could be close enough to home to see his father more. When Ryan played in Nashville, Bob sometimes made the nine-hour drive the morning of a game, watched Ryan play, then drove through the night back to Wisconsin so he could be home to open the rink the next morning.

“That’s just the type of guy he was,” Garrett said.

Without him, they’ve carried on his dream of making hockey accessible to Madison’s youth. And they’ve done it the way Bob always did: by hand, even if that’s meant an offseason for Ryan unlike any other NHL player.

Here, it’s not important that Ryan can afford to pay someone to replace the rubber on the floor. What matters is that he wants to do the work himself.

As Ryan and Garrett carry on their work on their hands and knees this warm August day, their father seems to watch over them from his portrait on the wall.

It’s not hard to look at that, Suter says, because he has so many happy memories of times spent here with Bob.

It’s been nearly a year since Bob died, and Ryan and Garrett continue to keep his dream alive, admitting there’s still a lingering urge to make him proud.

“We both wish,” Garrett said, “that our dad would’ve been around for this part.”

Follow Chad Graff at twitter.com/ChadGraff.