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While NBC will feature more regular season NHL games on its broadcast network than ever this year, even with a season shortened to 56 games, they are missing out on a few typical event games. There is no All-Star Game this year (it was originally scheduled for Sunrise, Florida), there is no Winter Classic outdoor game (scheduled for Minneapolis), and there is no other outdoor game previously planned (one had been planned for Raleigh). But, as Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported on Friday, the league plans to play two games on February 20 and 21 at a purpose-built outdoor arena at Edgewood Lake Tahoe Resort in Shoreline, Nevada (a photo Friedman included in his article (approximate location is seen above), and these games (Vegas Golden Knights-Colorado Avalanche and Philadelphia Flyers-Boston Bruins) will air on NBC:
According to multiple sources, the NHL is kicking off its Mystery, Alaska experience with four teams as part of a unique two-game, two-day “Weekend Outdoors” showcase at Lake Tahoe. Edgewood Tahoe Resort, home of the popular celebrity golf tournament, hosts these matches, which will be played around the 16th, 17th and 18th holes.
… Fans will not be in attendance as the number is limited to around 400 – mostly traveling groups of teams and people needed to work. This will give the TV different opportunities to broadcast the games, such as drone cameras.
It is, at this point, a year-long project, but if it works, the NHL might consider making quirky, quirky places a regular occurrence. Either way, it has a chance to be a special look in a tough season.
According to NBC’s broadcast schedule, the February 20 game (Golden Knights-Avalanche) is expected to be the only Saturday game to air on NBC through April 24. The idea of a special external frame therefore helps to explain this. And Scott Burnside of The Athletic and Emily Kaplan of ESPN both confirmed with sources that the league is moving in this direction. Burnside added some information on other places the league has considered:
NHL officials have been researching possible venues for such an event since summer’s return to the playoffs playoffs took place in bubble contexts in Toronto and Edmonton. At one point, there was talk of organizing two external events, one in Canada and one in the United States. Lake Louise, AB was on the map earlier and there has been talk of Canmore, AB, as well as a number of mountainous areas in the western United States, such as Utah and the region. of Grand Teton in Wyoming, east of Idaho. Logistics, including the ability to build and maintain two NHL-style rinks at different locations in different countries, at this point reduced this idea to a four-team event in Nevada.
We will see how it goes. And if the league continues with that plan, we’ll see its performance in the leaderboards. While outdoor NHL games (the New Year’s Winter Classic in particular) have attracted very well at the start, some recent editions of the Winter Classic (including the Nashville Predators-Dallas Stars game) last year, which averaged 1.97 million viewers, but with a pre-game hour included), did not put up good audience figures.
And while the Winter Classics have always gone beyond typical indoor games, that often doesn’t say much. And other non-Winter Classic outdoor games have generally drawn even lower numbers, with some of them even airing on NBCSN rather than the broadcast network. But the outdoor games have always seemed worth it for the league and the clubs involved; they allowed a lot of ticket sales, with most of those games being played in big stadiums, and they brought attention to the NHL regular season (and to NBCSN for games broadcast there). With a fan-less event like the plan here, however, TV ratings are the only reason for it. So we’ll see what they turn out to be, and if they’re good enough to inspire a return to this kind of plan in the years to come.
[Sportsnet]
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