{"id":138710,"date":"2026-01-31T12:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/138710\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T12:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:27:09","slug":"outdoor-hockey-in-tampa-how-the-nhl-is-making-the-lightnings-dream-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/138710\/","title":{"rendered":"Outdoor hockey in Tampa? How the NHL is making the Lightning\u2019s dream reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman still doesn\u2019t know if he\u2019ll be able to play in Sunday\u2019s outdoor game against the Boston Bruins. However, the former Norris Trophy winner, who is working his way back from an elbow injury that has kept him out since early December, said the untraditional locale has been a \u201cbig motivation\u201d to return.<\/p>\n

This would truly be a bucket-list moment for the Swede.<\/p>\n

Hedman, who was drafted by the Lightning in 2009 and became a cornerstone as the then-depressed franchise won two Stanley Cups, shook his head Thursday at the idea that Tampa could host outdoor hockey.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever in my wildest dreams,\u201d he said with a smile.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, the NHL didn\u2019t know if it was possible, either.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of what makes Sunday\u2019s Stadium Series game at Raymond James Stadium so special. This is the 45th outdoor game in league history \u2014 and maybe the most ambitious.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve never done anything like this,\u201d said NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer.<\/p>\n

Part of it is the field design and pomp, with a treasure map surrounding the rink, a stick tap to the Gasparilla Pirate Festival that\u2019s expected to bring a half-million people into the downtown area over the weekend. There will be countless props, from barrels to boats to a shipwreck that has identifiers of both the Bruins and the Lightning. Players will walk a plank to get to the ice.<\/p>\n

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\n A rendering from the NHL shows its vision for Sunday\u2019s Stadium Series game in Tampa. (Courtesy of the NHL)<\/p>\n

However, what really separates this event is the \u201cengineering marvel,\u201d as commissioner Gary Bettman called it, that the league hopes will enable the teams to play on safe, NHL-caliber ice despite the Florida sunshine, temperatures and humidity.<\/p>\n

An air-conditioned, tension-fabric building 34 feet high, 125 feet wide and 240 feet long has stood over the ice sheet for the past week. It\u2019ll be dismantled in a matter of hours on gameday for the 6:30 p.m. ET faceoff.<\/p>\n

The forecast calls for an unseasonably frosty high in the 40s on Sunday, so the league changed its original plan of beginning to remove the structure at 6 a.m. Sunday, and will instead begin at 12 a.m.. It will be complete by 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cGary Bettman, he\u2019s one hell of a commissioner,\u201d Lightning coach Jon Cooper told The Athletic. \u201cAnybody that can make it 40 degrees in Tampa on the night of an outdoor game, he\u2019s wielding some magic wand.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Vinik, who sold his ownership share of the team in 2024 but remains its governor, has been asking Bettman about getting an outdoor game in Tampa for as long as he can remember. He said it\u2019s taken about 15 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty close to the day I bought the team,\u201d Vinik said, which would place his initial pitch in 2010.<\/p>\n

Vinik got the NHL\u2019s attention by building the Lightning into a model franchise, winning the Stanley Cup twice and selling out Benchmark International Arena for 10 years straight. Filling the 65,000-seat<\/a> football stadium was not a problem.<\/p>\n

Actually pulling off a game like this was another story altogether.<\/p>\n

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\n The rink at Raymond James Stadium is currently inside a climate-controlled structure. (Mark LoMoglio \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Bettman said the Lightning were \u201crelentless\u201d in their pursuit of an outdoor game. That included the team\/city putting up a billboard on the highway after the 2018 All-Star Game in Tampa so the NHL officials would see.<\/p>\n

It was a photo of an outdoor game at Raymond James Stadium and a Stadium Series logo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, NHL!\u201d it read. \u201cNext time, let\u2019s go outside the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n The Lightning have lobbied the NHL for an outdoor game for years. (Courtesy of the NHL)<\/p>\n

By the time of the All-Star Game, the NHL wanted to try an outdoor game in Tampa. The Lightning were one of the best teams in the league that season, and would go on to win the President\u2019s Trophy the next season and then the Stanley Cup in 2020 and 2021. It also didn\u2019t go unnoticed that 25,000 Lightning fans traveled to the team\u2019s outdoor game in Nashville in 2022.<\/p>\n

The city has pulled off Super Bowls, Final Fours \u2014 pretty much everything. Bettman said he felt the franchise \u201cdeserved\u201d a Stadium Series game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question was the logistics of actually doing it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

How do you build an NHL-caliber rink in the heat and humidity, and protect it from rain?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt the team could pull it off and the city could pull it off,\u201d Mayer said. \u201cBut could we execute it?\u201d<\/p>\n

The NHL made site visits to Tampa and engaged its architectural sports experts to try to figure out how to protect the ice. Dan Craig, who has long been in charge of building rinks for the league, did his research. The league conducted tests at the Nashville outdoor game, stringing a cable the length of the rink between two forklifts to lift a plastic tarp over the rink. Figuring out how to secure it was a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first gust of wind and boom, everything was gone,\u201d said NHL executive vice president of events Dean Matsuzaki. \u201cWe were like, \u2018OK, this isn\u2019t going to work.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the wilder ideas left on the cutting room floor would have had helicopters lifting a structure out of the stadium and into the parking lot. The league decided that wouldn\u2019t work and would be too dangerous.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until a serendipitous moment during a layover that the NHL got its \u201ceureka moment,\u201d as Mayer put it.<\/p>\n

Ryan Hunter and Alex Lentowich were traveling together three years ago when they unknowingly got a big break.<\/p>\n

The two co-owners of Texas-based GNB Global, a tension-fabric building manufacturer, were on their way to Winnipeg, near their shared hometown of Cooks Creek. A delayed flight from Nashville stranded them in Minneapolis overnight, forcing them to connect through Detroit the next morning to reach Toronto, then Winnipeg.<\/p>\n

\u201cA series of misfortunate events,\u201d Lentowich said.<\/p>\n

At the Detroit airport, they saw several people wearing NHL backpacks. As huge hockey fans, they approached them, and after seeing a Stadium Series tag on one of the bags, started discussing outdoor games. One of the NHL reps was Derek King, the league\u2019s vice president of hockey operations, who manages ice conditions for major events. King mentioned the challenges they were having figuring out a solution for a Tampa outdoor game.<\/p>\n

Hunter and Lentowich were intrigued and thought they could help. The league invited them to Carter Finley Stadium in Raleigh, N.C., for the next year\u2019s Stadium Series game to show them the setup and requirements. By the time they were flying back to Dallas, Hunter was already coming up with ideas and 3D models.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing is impossible, right?\u201d Hunter said. \u201cThat\u2019s how it all started.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea was to build what looks like a gigantic tent but is actually a steel-framed structure covered in an engineered fabric membrane, inside which the climate can be controlled. Their real challenge was figuring out how to break down and remove it quickly and safely.<\/p>\n

Once they came up with a plan, they conducted multiple test runs, the first in September in Texas. The company spent three days last week building the final version of the structure, which is divided into sections on rails so it can be assembled and taken apart without doing so over the rink itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like a pit crew, you know?\u201d Mayer said. \u201cThey\u2019ve got everybody working together. They have it all down to a science in terms of dismantling and how quickly they can do it. If it took 10 hours, it took 10 hours. If it took seven, it took seven. We just needed to know for game day. Because once you start taking it down, there\u2019s no going back. It was pretty cool how it all came together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unfortunate part is that Vinik won\u2019t be there to see it.<\/p>\n

After all the years of dreaming and campaigning and nudging the league for an outdoor game, Vinik suffered a major leg fracture during a snowmobiling accident on a trip to Norway with his kids. The team said in a statement Friday that he\u2019s expected to make a full recovery but won\u2019t be able to attend Sunday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Vinik, in a recent conversation with The Athletic, talked about how much having this Stadium Series game means to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis just isn\u2019t a story about Tampa Bay or the National Hockey League or the sport of hockey,\u201d Vinik said. \u201cThis is a story about sports being able to pull something off like this, and it\u2019s going to be a spectacle. We\u2019re pleased to be able to share this with our fans. Our fans want an outdoor game every bit as much as the guy you\u2019re speaking with. It\u2019s going to be on Gasparilla weekend, too. It\u2019s going to be a place to be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Victor Hedman still doesn\u2019t know if he\u2019ll be able to play…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[858,5691,135,862,137,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-138710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-tampa","11":"tag-tampa-bay-lightning","12":"tag-tampa-headlines","13":"tag-tampa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138710","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=138710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}