What the heck were people doing on the ice when the Zamboni was resurfacing? No rink I have been to allows people to stay on the ice (probably for liability reasons), and they certainly don't resurface in the middle of a game. I guess they do thing different up in Bulldog country.
From the article: "It looked like the Zamboni doors flew off onto the ice," a player told KDLH-TV in Duluth, referring to the doors of the enclosure in which the Zamboni sat while waiting to go on to the ice.
The Zamboni had finished clearing the ice and was parked off the ice behind the swinging doors to the ice rink. When the explosion occurred, it blew the swinging doors off their hinges and they flew across the ice hitting a few of the (ahem) "athletes".
Great question, and kinda surprising policy from a rink located in the State of Hockey. A couple of years ago during intermission at a game of our local NCAA D1 team, they have this celebrity/mascot broom-ball melee with probably 30 different mascots against the people from that night's game sponsor - literally over 40 people on the ice with 4-5 different balls on the ice as well. It starts to run late, and the Zamboni's come on the ice and start resurfacing while the idiots are still playing broom-ball. It's pretty much chaos. One of the sponsors slips on the ice, cracks his melon and is unconscious, and Nobody sees him until the crowd starts hollering for help.
It was pretty eerie watching a red pool of blood grow under this guy's head. Don't know how it turned out other than he didn't die of the injury, but after that, the local arena came out with a policy of no one on the ice while the Zamboni is out there.