Hurricanes will have to wait longer for outdoor game at Carter-Finley Stadium
Carolina Hurricanes fans will have to wait longer than expected to see an outdoor hockey game in Raleigh.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, in a news conference Monday, said that an NHL Stadium Series game would be held in Nashville, Tennessee, and hosted by the Predators in the 2021-22 season. The Tampa Bay Lightning will be the Preds’ opponent in the Feb. 26 game at Nissan Stadium, the first outdoor hockey game in Nashville.
The Winter Classic will be in Minnesota on Jan. 1, 2022, matching the Wild and St. Louis Blues. A Heritage Classic game also will be played in March in Canada, at a site to be determined.
The league initially had plans to schedule an outdoor game in Raleigh in the 2021-22 season. The game was postponed, Bettman saying, “We’ll be back at some point. It’s just a question of timing, stadium logistics and the like. We are very much looking forward to having an outdoor game in Carolina and we will schedule another one at some point.”
Canes president and general manager Don Waddell said in a statement Monday that the decision to postpone the game for a year was a mutual agreement “to assure a safe environment in front of a packed house at Carter-Finley Stadium.”
After years of negotiations with the NHL and N.C. State, the Hurricanes were selected for their first outdoor game experience in February 2020. At the time, Bettman said Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon was “relentless” in his pursuit of the event and added, “It’s a testament to the great fan base that we’ve always known has been in the Triangle.”
But the NHL announced in December 2020 that the outdoor game scheduled for Feb. 20, 2021, at Carter-Finley Stadium was being postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Canes’ game at Carter-Finley was scheduled to be the 12th NHL Stadium Series game and the 32nd NHL regular-season outdoor game overall. Carter-Finley would have been the sixth college football facility to host an outdoor hockey game, joining Michigan Stadium, Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Minnesota’s TCF Bank Stadium, Notre Dame Stadium and Air Force’s Falcon Stadium.
This story was originally published June 28, 2021 at 7:11 PM.
