A steel tent frame is rising from the normally green field at Raymond James Stadium. It's part of the football stadium's transformation into a hockey rink for the Tampa Bay Lightning's first home outdoor game.
It's called the Stadium Series, and it's become one of the highlights of the National Hockey League's season. On Feb. 1, more than 60,000 fans are expected to gather for what organizers hope will be a cool, rain-free night with low humidity.
But just to make sure the ice doesn't soften, crews are building an air-conditioned, climate-controlled tent over the rink. NHL executive Steve Mayer said it will come down two hours before game time.
"If we were building the ice without the tent, and we were dealing with 80-degree days, 70-degree days, it's not easy to maintain," Mayer said during a news conference Thursday at the stadium. "But the fact that we're building in a controlled environment and then exposing the rink for just a few hours of the game, I think we're going to be OK."
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Mayer, who is president for NHL Content and Events, said the league has been working out the kinks of keeping the ice shaded for most of a decade.
He said Ray Jay will be the center of the hockey world for one night. The game versus the Boston Bruins will start at 6:30 p.m.
"This is just not a Tampa event," Mayer said. "This is seen around the world, and this is a great chance for us to show Tampa to the rest of the world, not just everybody here, and you can't discount that. That's so important."
Since Tampa's Gasparilla parade will take place the day before the game, the field surrounding the rink is expected to feature a pirate motif.
The NHL has been regularly staging outdoor games since 2008, but until this year they were always in cold-weather cities. The league recently held its annual Winter Classic at the Miami Marlins' loanDepot Park, but the ballpark's retractable roof remained closed until game time.
Mayer said he still gets questions about why an outdoor game is being played in Florida.
"We heard some of those people saying,' Oh, well, Winter Classic has to be played in a winter environment,'" Mayer said. "It's the same people that, I think one day said, 'Why in the world are they having a franchise in Florida?' And I think a few Stanley Cups later, and incredible, incredible success, it makes all the sense in the world for us to be here."
Lightning CEO Steve Griggs had the stadium scoreboard show a photo of the billboard the team put up after Tampa hosted the NHL All-Star Game in 2018. It said "Thank you, NHL! Next time, let's go OUTSIDE the box."
"It's been 10 to 15 years in the making to make this happen, and for us, with our organization, we thank the NHL, we thank the Tampa Sports Authority (which manages the stadium) for really making it happen," Griggs said.
"But this is really a celebration of hockey wrapped around Gasparilla. You know, there's going to be 63,000, 64,000 fans here in the building, and they're hockey fans. And for us, this is about bringing it back, getting it here. It took us a while, but to celebrate hockey and celebrate the great fans we have here in Tampa Bay."
This will be the Lightning's second outdoor game. They beat the Nashville Predators, 3-2, before a crowd of 68,619 at Nissan Stadium in a 2022 Stadium Series game. More than 25,000 Lightning fans traveled to Nashville, helping to persuade the league that Tampa deserved a shot in the outdoors as well.
