MIAMI — NHL officials sat in a control room at loanDepot park Tuesday night, counting down to what could have been a dramatic moment.
As a test, they were opening the sliding glass panels in left field and the retractable roof overhead as they will at some point before the Florida Panthers host the New York Rangers on Friday in the 2026 Discover NHL Winter Classic (8 p.m. ET; HBO Max, truTV, TNT, SNW, SNO, SNE, TVAS).
“We were like, ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one …'” NHL executive vice president of events Dean Matsuzaki said. “‘Open!'”
The result?
A palm tree and a few flamingos fell amid the decorations on the field, but that’s about it.
“It was like, ‘OK, that was a little anticlimactic but definitely necessary,'” Matsuzaki said. “Trust me, anticlimactic was what we were looking for.”
The temperature was 58 degrees Fahrenheit at ice level when the roof opened and never exceeded 59. That made it about the same as a typical NHL indoor game.
Conditions are expected to be similar Friday night, which means the temperature at face-off might not set the record for an NHL outdoor game. It was 65 degrees Fahrenheit at Coors Field in Denver on Feb. 27, 2016, and 62 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles on Jan. 25, 2014, for the Stadium Series.
“If you look at the forecast coming up, the nights are cool,” NHL vice president of hockey operations Derek King said. “By the time we get to puck drop, it could be great conditions. It’s exciting.”
The NHL was confident it could pull off this event despite the challenges, after staging 43 previous outdoor games in all kinds of conditions and learning from the experiences. The League wouldn’t have scheduled the game in Miami otherwise.
It has kept the roof closed and cranked the air conditioning to 60 to 64 degrees during the day while workers have been building the ice, planning to open the roof for the game.
Still, it wanted to do a test.
