NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Lightning’s outdoor game Saturday night in Nashville could include weather obstacles.
The forecast for the Stadium Series game against the Predators at the Tennessee Titans’ Nissan Stadium was calling for temperatures in the high 30s to low 40s at the 7:30 puck drop, and there was a likelihood for precipitation that would increase as the game progresses.
“Nashville is right on the edge of what’s going to be a line of light rain and snow that’s going to approach from the south,” said Paul Dellegatto, chief meteorologist at WTVT-Ch. 13 in Tampa. “They’re going to be right on the northern edge. Probably we’ll be OK, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there were some rain, probably some showers, developing maybe during the game.
“It’s still a couple days away, so the timing could be off by like two or three, four hours. The general feeling is cloudy. Surely, temperature-wise, fine for an outdoor game. Then, there are chances of some light rain or even light snow later at night. It probably won’t snow during the game. We’ll probably just have a cold rain. I think it’s definitely something to watch.”
Rain has created challenges for the league’s rink-assembly crew, which has spent this week protecting the ice from it. In anticipation of weather issues, the rink installation began earlier than it has for previous outdoor games. The sheet is an inch thicker than the 3/4-inch-thick ice in NHL arenas.
Rink setup began 10 days ago, when the NHL Stadium Series Ice Plant — a 53-foot-long trailer that houses what the league calls the world’s largest mobile refrigeration unit — arrived at the stadium. The truck houses the ice-making and -monitoring equipment to create the sheet by pumping as much as 3,000 gallons of glycol coolant into aluminum trays laid out on the stadium’s field. Water is added slowly to create layers of ice.
In putting on 33 outdoor games, the league has faced weather hurdles before. They learned a lesson from the 2020 Winter Classic at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas after steady rain leading up to the game melted the ice and the sheet had to be rebuilt.
“We’ve obviously learned from that, so we’ve changed our schedule and our approach,” Derek King, the NHL’s senior manager of facility operations, said Thursday. “When we know there’s weather coming in, we’ll try and get ahead of the schedule.”
Standing water will cause the ice to melt, and because of steady rain in Nashville, the league has worked to protect the sheet for most of the past two days. The crew brought out three large utility vehicles with 10-foot squeegees to remove water and resurfacing trucks to maintain the ice’s surface.
The Lightning and Predators were scheduled to practice late Friday afternoon.
“We’ve been on these machines since early in the day (Wednesday),” King said. “Light rain started early afternoon (Wednesday), and we’ve been on all night. We’ll keep doing what we need to do to remove it, and then our goal is to stay ready for practices (Friday). And I feel confident that that’s where we’ll get.”
The potential for rain during the game creates its own challenge. Light rain would create a pebble on top of the ice that would make it more like a curling sheet. Add players skating on the ice — creating a snow that could turn into a slush that could freeze — and the ice would lose its smoothness, King said.
“We’ll have to monitor that closely,” King said. “If we have to make any calls during the game on doing resurfacing during the intermission, that’s definitely what we’ll do. We’ve seen it in other games. I know in Philadelphia a couple years ago, we had some rain and it was really no issue with the truck keeping up to it.
“At the end of the day for us, we just want it to be a safe surface for the players.”
