On Monday, the NHL announced what was rumored for quite a while now. They officially announced thee playing of two outdoor regular season games in the picturesque mountain setting at Lake Tahoe next February. The games will be held 20th and 21st of February 2021. The event will be the only event held outdoor for this regular season.
On February 20th, the Colorado Avalanche will play against the Vegas Golden Knights, as part of the Bridgestone NHL Outdoors Saturday. The next matchup will be the next day on the 21st where Philadelphia Flyers will face off against the Boston Bruins in the Honda NHL Outdoors Sunday. Start time for both games are 3 p.m. ET.
Both games will be played on the south shores of Lake Tahoe. The lake is known to be one of the biggest alpine lake in North America, which will feature Edgewood Tahoe Resort as their backdrop. Geographically, Lake Tahoe is located right on the border of California and Nevada. It is important to mention that due to the current pandemic both games will not have fans attending.
In an NHL press release on Monday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman stated the challenges by being unique this season due to the pandemic raging resulted in the selection of Lake Tahoe for the outdoor event. Putting an outdoor game in a non-stadium location were not realistic in the past because of the logistics caused by fans attending.
“We are delighted to announce the NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe and can’t wait to get on site for what undoubtedly will be two thrilling games in a breathtaking setting,” Bettman said. “Ever since we began staging outdoor games in 2003 and made it a regular feature of our annual schedule in 2008, we have considered a myriad of non-stadium settings, but they always were rendered impractical because of the sheer volume of demand from our fans to attend.
“This season, unable to host our usual huge crowds at such events, we will continue our tradition of taking the game and our players back to their outdoor roots when the Avalanche meet the Golden Knights and the Bruins face the Flyers on an open-air rink at the spectacular Edgewood Tahoe Resort.”
A First for the Golden Knights
These two matchups will continue the long tradition of outdoor games, started in 2003 and will be game no.31 and 32. All previous games were held in stadiums in Canada and the United States. For both games, all four teams will suit up by wearing their recently-unveiled Reverse Retro sweaters, The reverse retro sweaters were conceived last November as a measure to generate more revenues in this hard hit season
For the Vegas Golden Knights, it will be their first outdoor game. The Flyers have played in 5 outdoor games, the Bruins in four of them while the Avalanche have played in three outdoor games.
