NHL Planning Outdoor Game in Bold Location, Potentially Including Edmonton Oilers

The NHL will soon be announcing their outdoor game for next season, and it's expected to be in the very hot climate of Miami featuring the Florida Panthers, potentially with the Edmonton Oilers.

Insider Elliotte Friedman revealed that the Panthers are slated for an outdoor game in the 2025-26 season in Loan Depot Park, Miami.

There's no word on who the opponent could be in the historic outdoor game. The Tampa Bay Lightning is a strong possibility as the in-state rival.

However, if the NHL really wanted to draw a larger television audience, the Oilers have developed a healthy rivalry with the Panthers too and would bring plenty of Canadian viewers.

It's pretty unlikely the Oilers will be selected, as the team has played plenty enough outdoor games, but it would be cool to be involved in such a spectacle.

The NHL is obviously trying to grow hockey in non-traditional markets by selecting a team like Florida for an outdoor game, and it is the perfect time to do so after their first Stanley Cup win.

However, there's going to be some real temperature challenges to an outdoor hockey game in Miami. When the NHL hosted their outdoor game at Lake Tahoe in Nevada, the game had to be stopped for 8 hours due to rapidly melting ice in direct sunlight.

Similar problems could easily arise deep in the sunshine state. NHL fans are already bewildered by how the league plans to pull this game off in the wake of the Lake Tahoe failure.

An outdoor hockey game in Florida is far from the average perception of the game being played in a frozen pond up north, and that's the directive for the NHL with special events like this - push the boundaries and expand the game to new fans.

Hopefully the NHL has some better technology developed and take more precautions to ensure the success of this outdoor game.

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