MIAMI — It will snow in Miami Friday night.
NHL – as part of the celebration planned for the Winter Classic game between Florida Panthers And New York Rangers There will be snow at Credit Depot Park, home of the Miami Marlins baseball team.
As this happens, the NHL is keeping some of the exact details of the plan under wraps. But some fans will at least get a few cereals.
“You may get snowed in,” Steve Mayer, the NHL's president of events and content, said Monday, essentially a message to the more than 30,000 fans expected at the game. This will be the first time the NHL will play an outdoor game in Florida.
The rink is built, the ice has melted (it's still being worked on, of course), and the stadium feels about 20 degrees colder than usual, which is obviously by design. In some cases, the sets are still being built, but everything will be ready when the teams report for practice on Thursday.
“It’s a show,” Mayer said. “There’s a hockey match going on and it’s so important. I mean it's a big game. Panthers-Rangers, you know, when we're in April, this could be the game that could determine whether the team makes the playoffs or not. But we also know that people are here for the experience, for something different, and we're going to give it to them – and we're going to have a little fun along the way.”
Which brings us back to the snow.
It hasn't officially snowed in Miami since 1977. There were some unconfirmed reports of a few flakes in the air in South Florida in 2010, and Friday's temperatures mean snow won't be courtesy of Mother Nature. Forecasters expect temperatures in the retractable-roof stadium area to rise above 50 degrees by the time the Panthers-Rangers game arrives.
But inside the stadium, where they plan to open the roof for the game, it will be a stage at any time of the year. The NHL, which placed logos and lines on the ice on Monday, plans to use everything from beach chairs to a lifeguard hut to palm trees as the backdrop for the game, as well as some nods to winter.
Some performers will be in parks, some will be in swimsuits.
“We designed it so that winter meets summer—or, to put it another way, here in Florida, summer meets winter,” Mayer said. “Fire, ice, heat, cold—every theme you could think of. So, half the field will look like Miami Beach… and the other side will look like a huge snowstorm has hit Miami. It’s a dynamic that we’ll have fun with throughout the game.”
