I live in Phoenix, and all summer the water from the tap is, if you’re lucky, tepid. Usually its just hot. Damn hot. So like you we keep pitchers of water in the fridge. In order to cool them down quickly I freeze hockey puck sized ice chunks in plastic-ware. You know, the “gladware” or whatever its called, like semi-disposable tupperware? They have a round shallow puck-shaped one that after you make ice in, you can invert and press the bottom to release the puck into your pitcher.
Cut down a 2 liter plastic bottle to whatever size you need,
Dump ice cubes in it to fill
Then add water and freeze.
It will freeze super fast but also with the ice already in it there is far less expansion going on.
I freeze gatorade 32ozish bottles like this all the time and have several with the labels still on them because there is pretty much no expansion at all even after months of this treatment.