Although NBC will feature more NHL regular season games on its broadcast network than ever this year, even with a shortened 56 game season, they are missing out on some typical event games. There is no All-Star Game this year (it was originally scheduled for Sunrise, Florida), there are no Winter Classic outdoor games (scheduled for Minneapolis), and there are no other previously planned outdoor games (one was set for Raleigh). But, as Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on Friday, the league plans to play two games on February 20 and February 21 in a specially built outdoor arena at Edgewood Lake Tahoe Resort in Shoreline, Nevada (a photo of Friedman included in its approximate article planned location is seen above), and these games (Vegas Golden Knights-Colorado Avalanche and Philadelphia Flyers-Boston Bruins) will be featured on the NBC broadcast:
According to several sources, the NHL is starting its Mystery, Alaska, experiment with four teams as part of a unique two-day showcase, “Outdoor Weekend” at Lake Tahoe. Edgewood Tahoe Resort, home to the popular celebrity golf tournament, is hosting these games, which will be played on holes 16, 17 and 18.
… The fan will not be present, with the number of people limited to about 400 – basically the travels of the teams and whoever is needed to work. This will give television different opportunities to broadcast the games, such as drone cameras.
It is, at this point, a one-year project, but if it works, the NHL can consider making picturesque places out of the ordinary, “wild nature” a regular occurrence. Whatever the case, this has a chance to be a special look in a challenging season.
According to NBC’s broadcast schedule, the February 20 game (Golden Knights-Avalanche) is set to be the only Saturday game to be broadcast on NBC until April 24. Therefore, the idea of a special outdoor setting helps to explain this. And Scott Burnside of The Athletic and Emily Kaplan of ESPN confirmed with sources that the league is going for it. Burnside added some information about other places that the league considered:
NHL officials have been looking for possible venues for such an event since the summer return to the playoffs. At one point, there was discussion about the realization of two outdoor events, one in Canada and the other in the United States. Lake Louise, Alberta, was on the map before and there was some discussion about Canmore, Alberta, as well as a number of mountainous areas in the western United States, such as Utah and the Grand Teton area in Wyoming, east of Idaho. Logistics, including the ability to build and maintain two NHL-style rinks in different locations in different countries, at this point, reduced that idea to an event for four teams in Nevada.
We will see how this plays out. And if the league goes ahead with that plan, we will see its performance in the standings. Although NHL outdoor games (New Year’s Day Winter Classic in particular) worked very well at the beginning, some recent editions of Winter Classic (including the Nashville Predators-Dallas Stars game last year, which averaged 1.97 million viewers, although with an hour before the game included), did not present large numbers of evaluations.
And while Winter Classics has still outperformed typical indoor games, that usually doesn’t say much. And the other non-classic external games in winter generally have even lower numbers, with some of them even being broadcast on NBCSN instead of on the broadcast network. But outdoor games still seem to be worthwhile for the league and the clubs involved; they allowed for a lot of ticket sales, with most of those games played at large stadiums, and drew some attention to the regular NHL season (and to NBCSN for the games that air there). With a fanless event like the plan here, though, TV ratings are the reason for that. Therefore, we will see what they end up being and if they are good enough to lead to a return to this type of plan in the coming years.
[Sportsnet]