Sunday’s Stadium Series game between the Lightning and Bruins has a unique hook.<\/p>\n
To honour Tampa’s pirate history, the rink will sit atop a treasure map design which will cover Raymond James Stadium’s field, the NHL announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The decision behind the pirate theme ties into Tampa’s annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival, which begins Saturday and runs through the end of February.<\/p>\n
The stadium, which is the full-time home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, features a 31-metre-tall pirate ship in the north endzone.<\/p>\n
The NHL unveiled a rendering of the treasure map design, which features “hockey-themed landmarks, paths and clues,” per the league.<\/p>\n
“Surrounding the rink are remains of shipwrecks, sea creatures and … floats from the\u00a0Gasparilla Parade,” the league teased in a statement.<\/p>\n
Country music star Tim McGraw will perform on a wooden dock that is part of the set during the first intermission, the league added.<\/p>\n
Weather challenges have played a role in the lead-up to Sunday’s game.<\/p>\n
An air-conditioned tent is covering the ice throughout the week, the NHL announced last Friday, when temperatures in Tampa were in the mid-20s Celsius.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay and Boston will practise under the tent on Saturday, but it will be removed for puck drop on Sunday, per the league.<\/p>\n
You can catch Sunday’s Stadium Series contest on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ at 6:30 p.m. ET \/ 3:30 p.m. PT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunday’s Stadium Series game between the Lightning and Bruins has a unique hook. To honour Tampa’s pirate history,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-134622","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-tampa","9":"tag-tampa-headlines","10":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}