{"id":383620,"date":"2026-01-02T13:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T13:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/383620\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T13:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T13:58:09","slug":"winter-classic-in-miami-providing-different-level-of-excitement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/383620\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Classic in Miami providing \u2018different level of excitement\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wait till the roof opens.<\/p>\n

The Panthers and New York Rangers practiced in the afternoon, so the NHL closed the sliding glass panels in left field and the retractable roof overhead to protect the ice from the sun.<\/p>\n

But they will play at night Friday (8 p.m. ET; HBO MAX, truTV, TNT, SNW, SNO, SNE, TVAS). The sun will be down, and the temperature is expected to be in the low 60s or high 50s Fahrenheit.<\/p>\n

At some point before face-off, the League will open those glass panels, revealing the lights of the downtown Miami skyline, and that roof, exposing the ice to the elements like it has planned to all along.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be cool,\u201d Forsling said. \u201cMaybe see some stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who knows what you might see?<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my favorite parts about these games is the walkout,\u201d said Panthers forward Brad Marchand<\/a>, who will play an NHL outdoor game for the fourth time. \u201cWhen you walk out, you\u2019re walking to the rink, and you get to take that all in. You get to see the scenery, hopefully see the city in the background and the roof opened up and just the different environment that you\u2019re in. It makes it very special.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NHL has staged 43 outdoor games since 2003-04, including 16 Winter Classics at New Year\u2019s, transforming regular-season games into spectacles and drawing a combined 2,240,068 fans. That\u2019s an average of 54,636 (not counting two games without fans in attendance during the COVID-19 pandemic), three times the crowd in an 18,000-seat arena.<\/p>\n

Clearly, fans and players love these events. Teams want to host them.<\/p>\n

Few thought the NHL would ever be able to play an outdoor game in Florida because of the heat and humidity. But it has played in temperatures ranging from minus-6 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit at face-off, learning from experience and improving its process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wait till the roof opens. The Panthers and New York Rangers practiced in the afternoon, so the NHL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-383620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}