That One Time Vegas Hosted An Outdoor NHL Game

Today is January 1st, which means the NHL's Winter Classic is soon. Given that today is Sunday and football is a thing, the Boston Bruins and Pittsburgh Penguins will wait until tomorrow to play at  Fenway Park in Boston. In the meantime, here's a neat history lesson.

Since 2000 there have been nearly 40 outdoor NHL games. But this trend began in an unlikely place, that being right on the Las Vegas Strip in the parking lot of Caesars Palace. On Sep. 27, 1991, the NHL presented an outdoor preseason game between the Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers, the first official outdoor game in league history.

Why Las Vegas, a city in the middle of a desert, was chosen as the destination, I have no idea. But despite horrible ice conditions, this event paved the way for not only more NHL outdoor games, but also professional hockey in the city of Las Vegas. 

The idea to do such an outlandish event came from Rich Rose of Caesars World Sports, who was a big Rangers fan.

"When I joined Caesars in 1988, one of the things I wanted to do was do an outdoor hockey game. At Caesars, our motto was: 'We can do anything.' It's not 'if' you can build it, but how high and how big? How large?" Rose told NHL.com.

The ice was made by Bob May of Ice Systems of America, and his team naturally faced several challenges in the Vegas heat. They had to use three times the refrigeration equipment for one rink to maintain coolness levels for the ice. It cost $135,000 to build the rink and temporary spectator stands.

On game day, many setbacks arose as it was an 85-degree day with a 40% chance of rain. When crews removed the heat-absorbing tarp (that was provided by NASA) that protected the ice, it immediately started to melt. There came a point where there were nearly three inches of water from the melted ice just hours before the game was scheduled to start. Pregame skates were naturally canceled.

But by blasting three times the normal amount of cooling equipment and power to maintain a single rink, the ice held up. 

Another problem was the lines on the ice for things like the red line, faceoff dots, and goal lines. Instead of using paint like normal rinks, the crews in Vegas used small fabric outlines that, due to the ice melting, were starting to resurface. Crews then had to rush out on the ice with dry ice canisters to patch up the lines.

After some so-called hockey expert named "Wayne Gretzky" deemed that the ice was playable enough, the game began. It was a preseason game, but it still featured the likes of NHL legends such as Gretzky, Jarri Kurri, Luc Robitaille, Brian Leetch, Mike Richter, and Bernie Nicholls. The Kings won 5-2.

Another issue presented itself in the third period as tons of bugs, mainly grasshoppers, swarmed the ice. They were attracted to the moisture from the ice as well as the bright lights from the stadium. The third period was pushed back as an extermination process was needed.

Both teams, the ice crew, and 13,000 fans in attendance were able to get through the game, which was a crapshoot in terms of ice conditions, but an overall monumental achievement that paved the way for both outdoor games and hockey in Vegas in the future.

"If there was one special event from those days, it was this one. We knew this was special. Nobody had ever done that. If you had asked me then if I thought they'd still be talking about this 25 years later, I'd have said yes. That's how special it was," said Hockey Hall of Famer Luc Robitaille.

A second preseason game was set to be played against these two teams at the Charlotte Coliseum in North Carolina, but it was canceled.

Nowadays outdoor hockey games are a community with 18 members of the current Vegas Golden Knights (which is also a thing now) playing in them. The Golden Knights played in their own outdoor game in 2021 at Lake Tahoe. If only they had a team in the 1990s to play back then at Caesar's Palace.

The Penguins and Bruins will play in the 2023 NHL Winter Classic tomorrow at 11:00 p.m.