Out of doors N.H.L. hockey will make its debut in New Jersey subsequent yr when MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford will host a four-team doubleheader of types within the league’s so-called Stadium Collection.
The New Jersey Devils will play the Philadelphia Flyers on the night time of Saturday, Feb. 17, and the Islanders will play the Rangers on the identical ice the next day, the Nationwide Hockey League introduced on Saturday.
The league mentioned it expects greater than 75,000 spectators per sport, and to proceed its streak of 37 consecutive sellouts for normal season outside video games, which started of their fashionable type in 2003.
“It’s a giant N.F.L. stadium and it’s our purpose to deliver it to life in a means that, frankly, we haven’t seen that a lot,” mentioned Steve Mayer, the N.H.L.’s chief content material officer. “We’re going to get tremendous artistic and spotlight the world.”
Mayer and Dean Matsuzaki, the league’s govt vp for occasions, mentioned that they had lengthy hoped to stage an outside sport at MetLife Stadium. However they mentioned the logistics there are extra difficult than at many different stadiums as a result of it’s the residence of two N.F.L. groups, the Giants and the Jets, and there’s much less time to entry the services for preparation. However they famous that the dimensions of the venue makes it potential to accommodate 4 groups, with scheduled observe time and leisure ice time with their households, for all 4 groups.
The groups might be scheduled off on the next Monday in case unhealthy climate over the weekend forces both or each video games to be postponed. The precise seating capability will rely on development of the decrease seating space that’s scheduled to happen in preparation for the 2026 FIFA males’s World Cup.
In 2014, the Rangers performed the Devils and the Islanders, three days aside, at Yankee Stadium. Every sport drew about 50,000 followers. The most important common season outside N.H.L. sport was held at Michigan Stadium in 2014 when an introduced crowd of 105,491 fan watched the Detroit Crimson Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs. The final outside sport held within the New York space was the Winter Traditional on a frigid New 12 months’s Day in 2018 between the Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres at Citi Area, when 41,000 followers sat via temperatures that began at 7 levels Fahrenheit within the morning and peaked at 25.
Mayer mentioned organizers hope to bolster subsequent yr’s occasion with further leisure, youth hockey video games and music. Requested if they might search New Jersey natives, like Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen to carry out, Mayer requested a reporter if he had Springsteen’s cellphone quantity, including with fun, “We’d like to speak to him instantly.”