One foggy October night in Orono, Maine

The strange-but-true tale of how three Hockey East schools played a role in the origin of the last remaining major American figure skating tour.

In late October 1986, Hockey East was embarking on its second full season as a league after breaking off from the ECAC. The University of Maine, one of the league’s inaugural schools, was set to open its season on Friday, October 24th with a two-game league home series against Boston College.

But a few days before, Alfond Arena was set to host another opening - the opening of Scott Hamilton’s America Tour. The five-stop tour was conceived by Hamilton, the 1984 Olympic gold medalist in men’s figure skating, and his agent at IMG after Hamilton was let go by the Ice Capades. As Hamilton has said in multiple interviews since, the Ice Capades didn’t see the value in keeping him a headliner, claiming the shelf life of a men’s gold medalist was far shorter than their female counterparts. Someone like Dorothy Hamill would still draw tickets in 1986, despite her gold medal performance happening ten years earlier. But Hamilton would be old news two years removed from his gold medal victory.

Hamilton, not one to shy away from any challenge (in childhood, he recovered from a mysterious disease that stunted his growth and as an adult, has overcome several bouts with cancer and non-cancerous brain tumors), decided to start his own tour. And unlike the fairy tale-driven Ice Capades shows, Hamilton’s would be a bit more high-brow, mature and artistic. 

An ad in the Bangor Daily News from early October 1986 advertising the first stop of Scott Hamilton’s America Tour.

Scott Hamilton’s America Tour would take the ice in the fall of 1986, and its first stops were all college hockey arenas. The first performance of the Scott Hamilton tour would be Maine’s Alfond Arena, followed by stops at University of New Hampshire’s Snively Arena and University of Vermont’s Gutterson Fieldhouse. (While Maine and UNH were Hockey East members at the time, UVM was not, having remained in ECAC Hockey after the split. The Catamounts would eventually join Hockey East in 2005.)

Hamilton had a connection with Maine head coach Shawn Walsh, as Walsh was a player and assistant coach at Bowling Green in the 1970s, a time when Hamilton was tightly connected with the school and its rink. His father was a faculty member, Hamilton learned to skate there, and as Hamilton moved up the ranks, he often traveled back there to do shows and fundraise. It is unclear if that connection is why the tour started in Orono.¹

But we do know, thanks to the Bangor Daily News, that Walsh, then entering his third season as Maine’s head coach, was in the audience as Hamilton’s show started its first show, and expressed his interest in it because of his and Hamilton’s shared roots at Bowling Green. Walsh, among others in the audience, watched “performances that ranged from slow and romantic to dramatic, jazzy and powerful” according to the Daily News’ Margaret Warner. 

The first performance was going well…until something happened that put the tour, skaters, spectators, rink and Maine’s home season in jeopardy.

According to the Daily Maine Campus, Maine’s student newspaper, on October 23, 1986, “temporary cables were set up to accommodate the lighting needs” of the show. These cables were housed at the arena, having been purchased “for the 1983 Grateful Dead concert at the arena.”²

During the finale of the Scott Hamilton America Tour, a 440-volt cable overloaded, sparked and caused smoke to fill the arena. The skaters kept skating, thinking the kind Alfond Arena staff had surprised them with some special effects. The audience went along with it, except for those seated closest to the overloaded cable, who were injured from the sparks and started struggling to breathe due to the smoke. 

When the Alfond Arena’s staff realized what was going on, they sprung to action. One of the campus’ staff electricians, Roger Richards, “received a shock when he grabbed the burning wire and tried to get it outside,” according to The Daily Maine Campus. Another, Nathan Emerson, “tried to cut the cable from the transformer outside the building while it was still energized.” When emergency personnel stopped the finale and started evacuating the crowd, a campus firefighter broke his hand in the mass exodus. 

The 3,000 person crowd exited into a foggy fall evening, and the injured were assembled at the nearby Alumni Center, which was used as a triage center. Thanks to help from fire crews from Orono and Old Town, the arena was able to be cleared of smoke and sparks, allowing electricians to get in, assess the damage and fix the lighting grid. 

Despite the fire, both shows went on. Walsh’s Black Bears were able to start their season with that BC series a few days later, splitting the series. That season would end in the first of ten NCAA Tournaments Walsh would lead Maine to as head coach.

Hamilton and his tour rebounded from its disastrous first night. They did run into dressing room problems two stops later at UVM (according to a tale Hamilton has told in two books, then-Catamounts head coach Mike Gilligan wouldn’t allow the tour to use anything but the ice surface and the visitor’s locker room, meaning the skaters had to construct a curtain down the middle of the locker room to create men’s and women’s dressing areas.) Despite those hiccups, the tour continued past its inaugural five-stop foray, rebranded as Stars On Ice, outlived Ice Capades and all of its other competitors, and begins its 34th season this weekend in Florida.

And the Hockey East tradition continues: the tour will stop at Agganis Arena, the home of Boston University men’s hockey, on April 30th. 

1. I’ve interviewed Hamilton twice, but I’ve not been able to work the question into the conversation.

2. I can only imagine what a Grateful Dead concert at Alfond Arena was like. That might need to be the next thing I research.