The field design process for every NHL outdoor game begins with a hand-drawn sketch, oftentimes from the pen of President of Content & Events Steve Mayer. This season’s Winter Classic, which will see the Panthers host the Rangers at LoanDepot Park in Miami on Friday, was no different.
Mayer shared his initial notebook sketch for Friday’s game exclusively with SBJ (see above), along with the newly released rendering of the field design (see below) that will be seen by more than 35,000 fans on site and millions more at home across TNT and HBO Max in the U.S. and Sportsnet and TVA Sports in Canada. He first provided the drawing in July to the league’s creative services team, which was responsible for converting it into a full-fledged design concept.
The theme for the 2026 Winter Classic is “Snowy Winter Comes to Sunny Florida.” As such, the field design juxtaposes the beachy vibes of South Florida with the wintery landscapes where hockey originated.
The left side of the field captures Miami’s warm-weather vibe with a base layer of sand, dotted with flamingos, umbrella beach chairs, a lifeguard shack and a street hockey rink. The right side of the field, on the other hand, is covered in snow and features pelicans, snow-topped beach chairs, a lifeguard stand equipped with a snowplow and a synthetic ice rink. Palm trees will be scattered throughout the scene.
Mayer noted that the field design for the Miami game wound up being very similar to his initial vision. His original drawing shows the landscape divided between “summer” on the left and “winter” on the right. Appropriately, the Panthers will enter from the dugout on the summer side, while the Rangers will enter from the dugout on the winter side.
Under Mayer’s leadership, the NHL has bolstered its staff to bring many aspects of its major event production process, including field design, in-house.
“We still work with some awesome third-party vendors that are absolutely vital in putting these games on, but we’ve also decided to do a lot of it ourselves, and field design is one of those areas,” Mayer said. “It’s the first thing you see, it’s what a lot of people talk about and it’s gotten us a lot of kudos over the years.”
Once the league has developed a design concept, it works with Populous and BaAm Productions to bring it to life. Populous provides scale and overlay architectural support for the outdoor games, assisting the NHL in outlining the configuration of the field and location of the rink in the stadium. BaAM builds out the event site and constructs the rink under the league’s direction.
While field design sets the tone for each outdoor game, it is just one of the many production elements overseen by Mayer and his team. The Miami game will feature a pregame fan festival and live entertainment from Latin pop singer Luis Fonsi and indie-pop artist Role Model, and the league will hold a private New Year’s Eve party ahead of the game for select VIPs.
“We’re also entertaining people from the time they walk in the building to the time they leave, and there’s a lot of other elements because there’s a lot of downtime in the game,” Mayer said. “So that’s how we attack it, and it’s everything from the way the field looks to how we activate, to what the music is, to the special pieces that elicit emotion from the beginning till the end.”
