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Outside 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 kinds within the league’s so-called Stadium Sequence.
The New Jersey Devils will play the Philadelphia Flyers on the evening 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 stated it expects greater than 75,000 spectators per recreation, and to proceed its streak of 37 consecutive sellouts for normal season out of doors video games, which started of their fashionable kind in 2003.
“It’s an enormous 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,” stated Steve Mayer, the N.H.L.’s chief content material officer. “We’re going to get tremendous inventive and spotlight the realm.”
Mayer and Dean Matsuzaki, the league’s government vp for occasions, stated they’d lengthy hoped to stage an outside recreation at MetLife Stadium. However they stated the logistics there are extra difficult than at many different stadiums as a result of it’s the dwelling of two N.F.L. groups, the Giants and the Jets, and there’s much less time to entry the amenities for preparation. However they famous that the dimensions of the venue makes it attainable to accommodate 4 groups, with scheduled observe time and leisure ice time with their households, for all 4 groups.
The groups can 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 building 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 recreation drew about 50,000 followers. The biggest common season out of doors N.H.L. recreation was held at Michigan Stadium in 2014 when an introduced crowd of 105,491 fan watched the Detroit Purple Wings play the Toronto Maple Leafs. The final out of doors recreation held within the New York space was the Winter Basic on a frigid New Yr’s Day in 2018 between the Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres at Citi Subject, when 41,000 followers sat by temperatures that began at 7 levels Fahrenheit within the morning and peaked at 25.
Mayer stated organizers hope to bolster subsequent yr’s occasion with extra 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 telephone quantity, including with fun, “We’d like to speak to him instantly.”
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