SEATTLE, WA – The media availability of NHL Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Content Officer Steve Mayer began in the lower box seat section behind home plate with a flurry of activity behind him. The emergence of a stage for the league’s spectacle mid-season event unfolding from an artist rendition to reality.
While the action on the field was taking place, some news of the event off the field was announced. The Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights will play in front of a sellout crowd when they face off in the 2024 Discover NHL Winter Classic at T-Mobile Park on Monday (3 p.m. ET; MAX, truTV, TNT, SN, TVAS).
“This building will be completely filled come Monday,” NHL senior executive vice president and chief content officer Steve Mayer said Friday from the home of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners. “This is what it’s going to be all about. We knew from the very beginning that this has become quite a hockey town. Seattle is amazing. What the Kraken have done in their first three years is really incredible and their team and the Vegas Golden Knights will be on full display on Monday and they’re playing to a sold-out crowd.”
The expected capacity will approach 47,000 people with some standing-room tickets in a highly anticipated tilt involving the NHL’s two most recent expansion franchises.
The Vegas joined the NHL circuit in 2017 and won the Stanley Cup in their sixth season while Seattle is in their third campaign, qualifying for the playoffs last season and challenging for a second consecutive berth this season.
While this year’s edition of the Winter Classic will be Seattle’s first outdoor game, this is the second outdoor game for Vegas which battled Colorado in the NHL Outdoors in 2021 in Lake Tahoe, when the Covid-19 pandemic prevented fans from attending.
“The fact that the two last teams in are playing this game that has become our signature event says everything about the NHL right now,” Mayer said. “We’re growing. We’re going to new cities. These cities are taking to the NHL. We’re filling arenas. Now, we’re filling stadiums in those same cities, and to celebrate the last two teams in, one of which is the defending Stanley Cup champion, I think it says everything about the NHL.”
Other than building up the thickness of the ice surface, rink construction is pretty much done, short of some final elements being completed to the surrounding features on the field Friday.
The field stage exudes Seattle’s maritime theme with oceanic topographical maps, docks and piers, which are placed to connect the dugouts to the rink as entrance paths for the teams, a boathouse in left field which will serve as a broadcast booth and shipwreck in center field, all caused by the tentacles of the mythical Kraken sea creature.
“We’re just thrilled with the way it looks, how everything is sort of coming to life, really playing into Seattle,” Mayer said. “We talked about it a lot. We sent out a rendering and it is always fun to see a rendering on paper actually become real, and that’s what we’re watching behind us.”
Of key note has been T-Mobile Park’s retractable roof, something which the controlled environment has been invaluable in keeping the building process on track despite the ever present rain which Seattle is known for providing.
“Given the weather we’ve had in the buildup to the game on Monday, if we were outdoors all the time, we would have been really close to maybe not being able to play a hockey game,” he said. “But having the roof closed for the majority of the time that we’ve been here, we were able build in great conditions.”
The roof at the venue features three distinctly different panels designed to cover the field, but not enclose the ballpark, serving more so as a canopy than a dome. The open-air feel is retained as the sides are open. Mayer made clear the forecast for Monday is expected to allow for the roof to be completely retracted, a key element in the experience.
“Our goal has always been that we wanted to have the roof open,” Mayer said. “It’s an outdoor game. We had some secondary plans if it was raining and at what level it was going to rain to keep the roof open as much as we could. You can, obviously, open the roof in different degrees, and right now I see zero reason why the roof won’t be fully open on Monday.”
So with the outdoor experience to be pure and staged with maximum value, Mayer was confident Seattle will show how the city has embraced the NHL game and went further to declare it would likely lead to other marquee events being held in the Emerald City.
“I think we’re going to leave here on Monday and just say, ‘Wow. Look at how the Seattle market took to this game and how they’re behind the team,’” Mayer said. “And that leads to more.
“This is a great place. Hotels, restaurants, it’s a great place to be. It’s a great place for our sponsors, our other peripheral folks to want to visit. So, when we have all those things line up, it is a recipe to come back to do more, and there’s a lot more. We do have signature events that I’m sure everybody in Seattle would love to host: an All-Star Game, a Draft, and, down the road but the team has got to cooperate, the Stanley Cup Final.
“I do think this is a great place for us to do a big event. This absolutely proves it.”
Dennis Morrell has developed a deeply rooted passion for our game over many decades as a goaltender, writer, photographer, goalie coach, and active Level 3 USA Hockey-certified, on-ice official with over 2,000 games with the whistle. His passion for the game began in the early 70s upon his first glance at players battling for the puck at Clayton’s Shaw Park.
He has been fortunate to journalistically cover 2 NHL Entry Drafts, 5 NHL All-Star Games, 8 NHL Outdoor Games in two countries and 21 games played in the context of 9 Stanley Cup Final games, witnessing the oldest trophy in sports lifted by the champion 3 times, including when his beloved hometown team, the St. Louis Blues, won their first chalice in 2019.
He has witnessed over 1,000 major and minor professional games in over 250 different arenas. He can be reached at dennis.morrell@prohockeynews.com and you can follow him on Twitter at DMMORRELL.