Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Golden Knights are perfect fit for NHL’s outdoor event at scenic Lake Tahoe

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Andy Barron/Reno Gazette Journal

A crew builds an ice rink on the Edgewood Tahoe golf course on Feb. 9, 2021. The Golden Knights will face the Colorado Avalanche for a regular-season outdoor game at Edgewood Tahoe Resort on Saturday.

Jonathan Marchessault’s hockey career started, like so many players, outside.

A native of Quebec City, where winter temperatures hover in the single digits and lakes freeze, the Golden Knights forward remembers his days skating on the pond back home, which helped foster his love of the sport.

“It’s where everyone developed their passion for hockey. For myself, it’s outside,” Marchessault said. “My favorite memories from my childhood are just going to play out there and pack a lunch and come back probably like nine hours later and you’re pretty cold but it was all worth it.”

Marchessault will be playing his first NHL outdoor game at noon Saturday on NBC, when the Golden Knights take on the Avalanche at the Edgewood Tahoe Resort on the shores of Lake Tahoe. 

Outdoor games are nothing new in the NHL, as the league has hosted 29 since the 2008 Winter Classic to start the trend. 

In each of those instances, though, the game wasn’t truly “outside.” There wasn’t a roof, but the rink was built on a football or baseball field in an enclosed stadium.

This one will be different. 

There’s no existing infrastructure, instead building a rink on the 18th fairway of the Edgewood Tahoe Resort. There will be no fans, which allows the league to display the beautiful Tahoe mountains and forest and water where bleachers would normally be.

It will be a made-for-TV event unlike anything the NHL has ever produced.

“I think this is truly going to be a true outdoor game,” said Derek King, the NHL senior manager of facility operations. “It’s got that feel, we’re in the mountains. I think what’s pretty cool is you’re standing on the rink, we’re making ice and you look over the boards and there’s a lake there. This is a gorgeous spot.”

The Golden Knights will play the first outdoor game in their history on Saturday. This is how they got there.

Coming to Tahoe

Most of the NHL’s outdoor games take months and sometimes years of planning to pull off. The NHL last announced an outdoor game — the since-postponed Winter Classic that was set to be held Jan. 1 — a full year in advance.

That wasn’t the case with these games (Flyers-Bruins will be on Sunday at the same site). The NHL first approached the Edgewood Tahoe Resort in December, and by Jan. 11 the league made the announcement that two games were coming in just over a month.

“It was a very, very quick turnaround on something like this,” said Corinna Osborne, the resort’s general manager. “It’s really reassuring for even Edgewood to be able to develop a quick relationship, partnership and the excitement around it, and being able to help them with site preparations in making this happen.”

Click to enlarge photo

A crew works on building an ice rink for an on the Edgewood Tahoe golf course on Feb. 9, 2021. Two regular-season outdoor games to be played at Edgewood Tahoe Resort between the Colorado Avalanche and the Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday, Feb. 20, and the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday, Feb. 21.

The sheer speed with which the event came together is staggering, even after it was agreed upon. Osborne said the popular American Century Championship golf tournament the resort hosts every year takes about 30-60 days to physically prep, even after logistics are decided.

And that’s just to play golf on a golf course. Hockey is a whole different animal, but one the resort was prepared for.

“When you’re used to doing these big events, I think it was natural for us to assist and put the resources behind what they needed,” Osborne said. “It was certainly a natural fit for us as well to get this off the ground pretty quickly."

In a normal year the resort is not what the NHL is looking for in an outdoor venue. There’s not room for thousands of fans, and the smallest outdoor game in league history held just under 30,000 (the most, at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, held more than 105,000).

There aren’t bleachers at the golf course, and if the NHL wanted fans it would need to build its own stands. Since the event is held on the Nevada side of the lake, it would also be subject to state restrictions on large gatherings, which cap the attendance at such events to 50 people because of COVID-19.

That’s the case in many of the markets with NHL teams, where filling an arena isn’t possible. So if there aren’t going to be fans no matter where you go, might as well go somewhere that can’t hold fans anyway.

“This is an opportunity that was made possible in part because we’re in a year where there aren’t fans in many buildings and the venue in Tahoe would be one that was conducive to that,” Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “The NHL is looking to have some unique experiences for television, for players, for the game, for the league and this is the game that they chose.”

Starting from scratch

When the NHL takes a game outdoors, it normally has existing infrastructure to work with. A football field has electricity and water and loading bays and everything construction crews need.

The league has never built a rink on a golf course. Osborne joked she’d never seen a crew snow-blowing a golf course to prep for construction crews the NHL brought in to start from the ground up.

“You know the wall with the plug and you put the plug in and suddenly you’ve got electricity?” NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer said. “That’s not here.”

The NHL started construction about two weeks ago. On Feb. 9 crews started running pipes from the mobile refrigeration unit down to where the rink would be. They set down decking and aluminum panels as a foundation for the rink soon after, and dasher boards went up Feb. 12. That night they froze water to make the ice surface, and painted the ice Monday and Tuesday.

The rink was completed on Thursday, with teams taking the ice for the first time for practices Friday.

The forecast is about perfect for a hockey game — about 35 degrees and partly cloudy with a bit of a breeze for puck drop on Saturday. The NHL had contingencies for poor weather, including things like pouring thicker ice for abnormally warm or windy days to make up for any melting.

It all adds up to a picturesque event. The NHL constructed a media tower and player locker rooms on one side of the rink, making sure the cameras are pointed toward the water with the mountains in the background.

“It’s going to look amazing,” King said. “I think this is going to truly be one of the most unique games, so it’s going to be exciting to see on game day.”

Getting the Golden Knights

The Golden Knights didn’t find out long before everyone else that they were going to Lake Tahoe. Once the NHL decided to have two games there, it had to decide which teams were going. One of them was an easy call.

“One of the important decisions along the way was to include the Vegas Golden Knights,” Mayer said. “We did want to bring four of the top NHL teams to Lake Tahoe, and the matchup between the Golden Knights and the Avalanche, man, it’s a dream matchup on the ice.”

It helps to get the “home” team for a game in Nevada, but geography wasn’t the only determining factor. The San Jose Sharks are the closest team geographically, but were not invited. The Sharks struggled last year, while the Golden Knights went to the Western Conference Final.

And once the Golden Knights and Avalanche were realigned to the same division and were expected to be two of the top teams in that division, the NHL jumped at the chance to showcase two of its premier on-ice teams, a feeling Vegas reciprocated.

“It’s a special game and if there was going to be a game in our state, we would sure hope that we were a part of it,” McCrimmon said. “(The NHL) worked with the teams to make sure there was interest and of course there was no hesitation.”

The players can’t wait. The game in itself is important, as a clash with the Avalanche could have major implications in the standings later in the season. Colorado scored in the final minute to beat the Golden Knights in their last game on Tuesday, and forward Max Pacioretty said after the game he’s excited to get a rematch on such a big stage.

And that’s what it is — a big stage and a hockey playground for some of the world’s best players. It’s an important game for Vegas, but it doesn’t sound like the Golden Knights are going to let that stop them from having a good time, and going back to their outdoor roots.

“Growing up in Winnipeg, I skated on outdoor rinks from basically November all the way up until April,” Vegas captain Mark Stone said. “Brings back good memories. It’s fun to kind see the surroundings, breathe in the fresh air and get to do something that not everyone gets to do.”

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