Roof collapses on ice hockey rink as players train in Slovakia

[Randle Pat McMurphy]

Watch the Roof of This Hockey Rink Collapse Seconds After Children Scramble Off the Ice

A former NHL forward and group of youth hockey players escaped uninjured last week after a truly horrifying event: The roof of their hockey rink collapsed.

Richard Zednik, formerly of the Washington Capitals and New York Islanders, was skating with the young players during a training session in his native Slovakia when pieces of the ceiling began to fall, Yahoo! Sports reported. Zednik and the children cleared the rink just before the roof collapsed under the weight of the ice and snow above.

“Parents have noticed that the ceiling began to fall kind of frost, so quickly summoned the children to get them out of the ice surface. Then there was cracking and literally a few seconds the hall ceiling collapsed completely,” webnoviny.sk sports editor Oravia Brno Thomas said via translation.

As Yahoo! pointed out, in the portion of the video when it looked like someone was going through a tunnel, it was actually the roof covering the boards and the stands in the rink.

The facility had just opened in November. The cause of the collapse is under investigation.