There are, the Penguins figure, some features in the city's new multi-purpose arena that fans simply won't be able to miss when the building opens in a few months.

The new scoreboard and video screens, for starters. The ones at Mellon Arena would be impressive only if they were found in someone's game room; those that will be in the Consol Energy Center are purported to border on breathtaking.

And then there are the concourses. The ones in the new venue will be wide enough to accommodate -- get this -- crowds. There are goat paths with more room than the ones at Mellon Arena.

But there is one aspect of the new building -- quite likely one of the most important, at least where hockey is concerned -- that the Penguins hope will go overlooked entirely most of the time: The quality of the playing surface.

That's because ice is a lot like officiating; pretty much the only time it gets discussed publicly is when it is deemed to be unsatisfactory.

But no feature has more of an impact on the entertainment value of a hockey game and having the best possible playing surface in the Consol Energy Center is something on which the Penguins have spent considerable time, thought and money.

"A great deal of planning goes into the ice surface preparation because that's so important to our game," said Ken Sawyer, the team's chief executive officer. "We're expecting better ice than we have [at Mellon Arena], and certainly are doing everything we can to have the best ice."

That process starts far away from the arena floor because the most significant factor in determining ice quality is the amount of humidity in the air.

"We invested in a high-quality 'envelope' for the building, meaning the exterior 'container' to make sure we have the best materials in glass, seals, etc. that would really help to keep unwanted moisture from entering the building," Sawyer said.

"That's a big improvement over where we currently are and [we] have far less control over that. The whole building membrane, if you like, having great seals on it is probably the most important thing to start with."

At Mellon Arena, commercial deliveries are made at Gate 2, where large doors that are perhaps 100 feet from the playing surface must be raised -- and stay open -- while products are brought into the building. During spring and fall, warm air and humidity enter the building along with truckloads of beer kegs or concession-stand fare.

That won't be the case across the street, although the new place won't be entirely airtight, either. It would, after all, be kind of tough for paying customers to get in if none of the doors ever were opened.

The Penguins obviously recognize that reality and planned accordingly to counter an unwanted rise in the moisture content of the interior air.

"We invested in a custom-built de-humidification system, with controls and monitors that react to the interior moisture levels, and this allows us to really set the humidity right to optimize the ice conditions," Sawyer said.

The finer points of that system probably would be of interest mostly to engineers -- some of whom were responsible for its design -- but Sawyer said that one of its key features allows the operator to monitor temperature and humidity inside the building and to do on-the-fly fine-tuning to keep the ice quality as high as possible.

"They continually monitor the interior air and adjust how much fresh air is coming into the building, based on the number of occupants in the building," he said.

Technology will play a key role in maintaining the quality of the Consol Energy Center playing surface, but Sawyer said that something as simple as attention to detail came into play, too. As evidence, he cited the care taken to get the arena floor as close to perfect as possible.

"When we poured the cement over the cooling pipes, we wanted to get the surface as [even] and level as possible," he said. "In both cases, we have significantly exceeded the standards set by the NHL.

"It means that, when you pour the water on to create the ice, you have the most uniform thickness throughout. You don't have an area where the ice is thicker and another where it's thinner."

Just how good the ice will be after all the money and effort that has been spent on it is impossible to predict. Sawyer is not even ready to suggest it will be without equal in the NHL, because there simply are too many variables at work.

"The proof is in the pudding," he said. "Every other market has different weather conditions, and every building is different. Maybe somebody else is doing it [the same way], and they have better [environmental] conditions.

"We're doing everything we can to make sure that it's the very best."

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