The NHL will play outdoor games in Florida for the first time next season, hosting matchups in Miami and Tampa.

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told ESPN that next season’s Winter Classic will feature the Florida Panthers against the New York Rangers on Jan. 2 at LoanDepot Park, home of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins. Bettman also said next season’s Stadium Series game will be played between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins on Feb. 1 at Raymond James Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

“We’ve done 42 games all over North America. We haven’t had one in Florida, and our teams have been there for three decades,” Bettman said. “This is a golden age of hockey in Florida when you look at fan engagement, when you look at big events like All-Star [Games], when look at Stanley Cups between the Lightning and the Panthers and when you look at the growth of hockey at all levels of the game.”

This will be the first time the Panthers participate in an outdoor game and the Lightning’s second appearance (2022 Stadium Series vs. Predators in Nashville). With the Columbus Blue Jackets playing in this year’s Stadium Series game, it leaves the Utah Hockey Club as the only NHL team that has neither played nor is scheduled to play in an outdoor game.

Going to Florida will be the league’s latest chapter in hosting an outdoor game in a nontraditional hockey market.

The NHL held an outdoor game at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1991, but unconventional venues became more frequent with the introduction of the Stadium Series in 2014, with Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles; Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California; the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; and Carter-Finley Stadium at NC State hosting games.

NHL president of content and events Steve Mayer said LoanDepot Park is like T-Mobile Park, home of MLB’s Seattle Mariners, where the NHL held its 2024 Winter Classic. Mayer said both stadiums have a roof that can cover the playing surface that helps with building ice under controlled conditions. The idea will be to open the roof before the game for a dramatic entrance.

Mayer said Tampa and Raymond James Stadium, an outdoor venue with no roof in an area with high humidity, provides a different challenge. The NHL is working with a Dallas-based company to create what is essentially a mini-warehouse where they will build the ice under controlled conditions.

“Then at the appropriate time, which could be hours before the game, we’ll dismantle that structure and underneath we’ll reveal, ‘Voila, here is our rink. Let’s play some hockey,'” Mayer said. “That’s how we’re going to have to do it at Raymond James. The actual weather itself, unlike Dallas and Los Angeles, will not allow us to build ice because of the humidity and the temperatures during the day.”

Regarding alternate venues in both South Florida and Tampa, Bettman said Hard Rock Stadium wasn’t an option because of the Orange Bowl, which will be played around the same time as the Winter Classic. He said Tropicana Field, which was the Lightning’s first home back when it was the ThunderDome, wasn’t considered before it was damaged by Hurricane Milton because it was an indoor structure.

Keith Wachtel, the president of NHL Business, said the league examines several items when it comes to what teams can host an outdoor game. He said the league takes details such as potential venues, how a team is performing in the standings and how much support they could receive from fans in a market.

Wachtel said hosting the games six weeks apart means that Florida is “going to be the center of the hockey universe.”

Markets such as South Florida and Tampa Bay were part of the NHL’s expansion into the Sun Belt in the early 1990s. The Panthers reached the Stanley Cup Final in 1996 while the Lightning won their first Cup in 2004. The past decade, however, has seen both franchises take a more commanding role in the sport, with the Lightning winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2020 and 2021 and the Panthers claiming their first title last season.

Both cities have also hosted the NHL All-Star Game during this Florida hockey surge. Tampa hosted the game for the second time in 2018, and South Florida welcomed its second All-Star Game in 2023.

Mayer said as All-Star Weekend in Tampa was ending, the league saw a billboard from the Tampa Bay Sports Commission that read, “Next time, let’s go outside the box,” with a rendering of an outdoor game at Raymond James Stadium.

“That was their plea to us as we left town to come back,” Mayer said. “We’ve been focused on this for many, many years. The engineering of this took time. Then the building of this to where we could do two games in Florida? It just all came together so perfectly.”