Outdoor N.H.L. hockey will make its debut in New Jersey subsequent yr when MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford will host a four-team doubleheader of kinds in the league’s so-called Stadium Series.
The New Jersey Devils will play the Philadelphia Flyers on the evening of Saturday, Feb. 17, and the Islanders will play the Rangers on the identical ice the next day, the National Hockey League introduced on Saturday.
The league stated it expects greater than 75,000 spectators per recreation, and to proceed its streak of 37 consecutive sellouts for normal season out of doors video games, which started in their fashionable type in 2003.
“It’s a big N.F.L. stadium and it’s our goal to bring it to life in a way that, frankly, we haven’t seen that much,” stated Steve Mayer, the N.H.L.’s chief content material officer. “We are going to get super creative and highlight the area.”
Mayer and Dean Matsuzaki, the league’s government vp for occasions, stated they’d lengthy hoped to stage an out of doors recreation at MetLife Stadium. But they stated the logistics there are extra sophisticated than at many different stadiums as a result of it’s the dwelling of two N.F.L. groups, the Giants and the Jets, and there may be much less time to entry the services for preparation. But they famous that the scale of the venue makes it attainable to accommodate 4 groups, with scheduled apply time and leisure ice time with their households, for all 4 groups.
The groups shall be scheduled off on the next Monday in case unhealthy climate over the weekend forces both or each video games to be postponed. The actual seating capability will depend upon development of the decrease seating space that’s scheduled to happen in preparation for the 2026 FIFA males’s World Cup.
In 2014, the Rangers performed the Devils and the Islanders, three days aside, at Yankee Stadium. Each recreation drew about 50,000 followers. The largest common season out of doors N.H.L. recreation was held at Michigan Stadium in 2014 when an introduced crowd of 105,491 fan watched the Detroit Red Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs. The final out of doors recreation held in the New York space was the Winter Classic on a frigid New Year’s Day in 2018 between the Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres at Citi Field, when 41,000 followers sat by way of temperatures that began at 7 levels Fahrenheit in the morning and peaked at 25.
Mayer stated organizers hope to bolster subsequent yr’s occasion with further leisure, youth hockey video games and music. Asked if they’d search New Jersey natives, like Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen to carry out, Mayer requested a reporter if he had Springsteen’s telephone quantity, including with amusing, “We’d like to talk to him immediately.”
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