Fake Snow, Real Ice: On the Scene at Miami’s NHL Winter Classic

MIAMI — As the Panthers took the ice for their final practice the day before the 2026 NHL Winter Classic, a crew in the right field of loanDepot Park finished rolling out and stapling down white cotton sheets to resemble snow. (The gesture was timely: a snow squall early that morning swept through the Newark Liberty International Airport as a plane packed with Rangers fans boarded to fly south.) 

The left-field set design, mostly in place, looked more like South Florida: a sand-colored vinyl tarp on the ground, lifeguard stand, potted real palm trees, and flamingo figures were all ready to go for gametime. 

On Friday, the puck will drop on Florida’s first outdoor NHL game, when the visiting Rangers will play the hometown Panthers—hence the snow-meets-sand motif. 

The NHL has mapped out every detail of this unprecedented game for nearly a year. Its events team has planned moments including casting about 40 people to fill the outfield chaise lounges during the game, some in bathing suits, others in parkas; plus laid down street hockey and synthetic-ice hockey rinks, a nod to two ways Florida is growing the youth game. Both will be major parts of the in-person experience and the broadcast on TNT.

There are improvised last-minute touches, too—fallen iguanas (fake, of course) and a pair of inflatable mini-pools.

“I tell everybody on the team literally up until the time we go on the air, if we think we should change something to make it better, do it,” NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer told Front Office Sports, about 24 hours out from puck drop. “We were just down on the field and we were looking at the area under the umbrellas, and felt it was too flat, not a lot of depth, so we’re going to bring in rocks and more plants to be more vibrant on camera.”

Mayer said the NHL had hoped to bring in some real beach, but sand and ice are “probably the two worst things to mix,” and the league didn’t want to take a chance. The events team made the right call: Tuesday, when they did a roof-opening dress rehearsal, he said they got unexpected, “bizarre” crosswinds—which would have proven a nightmare for the playing surface with swirling sand. (Instead, they’ve used foam mounds for the texture—but when they’re on camera, Mayer said, you’d never know.)

The biggest spectacle is still to come. “We’re going to make it snow in Miami. And it’s going to snow hard,” Mayer told FOS. He declined to go into detail, but added the biggest advocate to find a way to bring winter’s signature to the tropics was NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

For all the challenges a winter outdoor game in Florida appeared to have on the surface, the NHL events team instead found loanDepot Park offered the “ideal conditions to build,” Mayer said. The construction, which has been ongoing since mid-December in the air-conditioned, temperature-maintained Marlins ballpark, made building both the rink and the surrounding set more predictable than past events.

“Think about when we’re on an outdoor rink, or building a rink in an outdoor stadium. There’s going to be a day of rain, there’s going to be a week when you’re dealing with [weather] conditions, and you’re always sort of balancing that,” he said. “But every day you come in [this] building, and it’s exactly controlled.”

And to answer the question fans have been asking since the NHL first announced it would play its 2026 Winter Classic in Miami: Yes, the venue is cold like a hockey rink. 

The roof will remain closed until just before puck drop Friday night, when the outside temperature is expected to be about 64 degrees, at which point the ice conditions will be in the hands of the elements. 

For now, there haven’t been any concerns about the playing surface from either the NHL or coaches and players who practiced Thursday. “The ice felt great,” Panthers defenseman Gustav Forsling said in the Marlins clubhouse, which is acting as Florida’s locker room; Rangers head coach Mike Sullivan, who coached the Penguins in the 2011 and 2023 Winter Classics, was “pleasantly surprised,” and defenseman Braden Schneider and forward Will Cuylle echoed approval.

When Cuylle initially heard about the Rangers’ participation in a Florida-based outdoor game, he was “probably a little skeptical, to be honest,” he told FOS. “I thought maybe it was an AI post or something. If you think about it, you can’t really have the ice. But you know, it makes sense logistically now. It’s weird thinking about having an outdoor rink in Florida, so it’s pretty cool they made it out here.”

Fans have—sometimes mercilessly—dragged the league for the decision to go south for this game. The NHL is well aware. “I’ll be honest—you read the fans’ stuff, and they’re like, ‘Why are you doing a Winter Classic in Florida? Like, that’s sacreligious,’” Mayer said. “I don’t understand why … It’s about time.”