EVANSTON — After opening the lockout-shortened NHL season with the first set of games on Saturday, officials from the Norris University Center have sent an urgent plea to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to cancel more games, citing the need for “ice maintenance.”

Norris issued a press release that stated, “Our ice-readiness experts have spent years studying the advanced science of what is frozen water and what is not. It is their belief from viewing the NHL’s Saturday games that these arenas have not adequately chilled their ice. Therefore, we are calling on the NHL to cancel all games until the ice is ready.”

Leslie Herd, a retired ice inspector for Norris, gave some insight on why officials made their recommendation. “You can’t simply reduce the temperature until the water is frozen…There are factors like humidity, barometric pressure, and the Coriolis effect that you have to consider, and of course, water can only become frozen on alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays in the second week of the month. Without these conditions, you can’t get water down to -40˚ Fahrenheit where it finally freezes, and so Norris officials concluded the NHL had not met the proper specifications for making ice.”

Norris officials further elaborated that the soonest they expected the ice to be ready is 2015.

Both the NHL and commissioner Bettman have declined to comment on the recommendation from Norris because they’ve already surpassed their 2013 quota for productive actions.