First time valid.
For Tampa Bay Lightning, it will be the first time in the open air when the team takes over the Nissan Stadium in Nashville during the night until Sunday, Swedish time. Tampa will be the 27th team in the NHL to play a regular season outdoor game. For the opponent and the home team Nashville, the second match will be outdoors.
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Tampa trained late on Friday night, Swedish time, before a match that is an experience in itself, but also a chance to practice part of the daily work in the company of family and friends.
Victor Hedman has played his entire 13-year NHL career in Tampa. Now the 31-year-old Tampabacken from Ö-vik and Modo gets the chance to play an outdoor match for the first time.
– Everyone is very tagged. This is exactly what you need for a long season; the match gives extra motivation, stated Victor Hedman. It will be a good push into a period when we play a lot of matches. So to be able to share this with family and friends and with teammates of course, it increases motivation.
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Hedman was upheld Steven Stamkos who has also not played an outdoor match before.
“A fantastic thing,” said Stamkos. As a player, you watch these matches all the time, the Winter Classic, the Stadium Series and all of them. Getting a chance to share the experience with your teammates and all the fans… it’s great. And everyone has family and friends in place, so it’s going to be a lot of fun.
When it’s time to drop off, 65,000 spectators will be waiting in the stands. An experience a little out of the ordinary. The players soaked up the atmosphere in the arena during training on Friday night.
– I was here before the basic series started when we advertised the Stadium Series. It looked different then. Now, with the rink and all… it evokes many old memories of that special feeling from when you played with your friends at home. I look forward to this, said Hedman.
– I had an outdoor rink right near where I lived when I was a kid, and I played a lot there. I remember how mom and dad called me in for dinner, and then it was just straight out again and play a little more. Now that rink is rebuilt and named the 77. It’s cool, smiled Hedman, who wears number 77 on his back.
It was last week that Örnsköldsvik municipality inaugurated the 77, at Varvet. There is now a wind-protected seat with benches plus a place to grill. And most importantly: a hockey rink donated by Victor Hedman.
– To be able to play like that when you are a boy, it helps you a lot when you get older, Hedman said.
Stadium Series, or the 2022 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series ™ which is the official name, is one of the three outdoor concepts in the National Hockey League. The league began the tradition with away games in 2003, when the Edmonton Oilers met the Montreal Canadiens in the Heritage Classic, a series mainly between Canadian teams.
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The Winter Classic series started in 2008 with the match between the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Buffalo Sabers. And the Stadium Series, which is played at the football stadium around North America, held its first game in 2014 when the Anaheim Ducks defeated the Los Angeles Kings in front of 54,099 spectators at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Since then, ten Stadium Series matches have been played. The Nashville Predators against the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Nissan Stadium in Nashville will thus be the twelfth in the order.
In total, the match will be the 34th in a row outdoors for the National Hockey League. A match that just like all other outdoor matches is a little extra cool, but which after all is still about two points.
– Exactly. Today in training is a day to soak up everything, the atmosphere and everything around the match. Feel the ice and how the frames work. Tomorrow is the match, so immediately when you step into the locker room it’s serious, said Victor Hedman. Then it’s about two points.
Steven Stamkos, who led Tampa to double Stanley Cup titles in 2020 and 2021, agreed:
– Sure it is. But that does not mean that you can not have fun while playing. We have played many important matches in recent years; this match does not fall into that category but as an experience it is definitely at the top, said Stamkos. That we will have many fans in place makes it extra special.
Although Hedman, Stamkos and Tampa Bay Lightning as a team are newcomers to the outdoor ice, there are players on the team who have tested the gaming experience that for many goes back to childhood, and the first cuts on an ice sheet outdoors: Pierre-Edouard Bellemare has played three matches outdoors. Further Corey Perry (2), Pat Maroon (2), Zach Bogosian (1) and Fredrik Claesson, a match. Lightning’s goalkeeper Brian Elliott has two games with the Flyers 2019 and 2021.
bake Ryan McDonagh is the outdoor veteran of the gang. He has played four games outdoors, all with the New York Rangers before joining Tampa when the Rangers rejuvenated the team in 2018.
– It is a very special experience, said McDonagh, 32, from St. Paul in wintry Minnesota. That crowd roar a bit from a distance, how the light is reflected in the ice… it’s just sucking everything in, and hopefully coming from here with two points.
The next match in the Stadium Series will be played in exactly one year: The Carolina Hurricanes will receive an as yet undecided opponent at Carter-Finley Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina, on February 25, 2023.
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