Hockey Fans Adore Outdoor Games, But Will General Sports Fans Like Made-for-TV Novelty Act From Lake Tahoe?

February 20, 2021 Alan Snel Jonathan Marchessault, Marc Andre-Fleury, Steve Mayer

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

The Golden Knights fans are stoked and most hockey fans are, too. It’s a novelty act, a made-for-TV event in the middle of February when the Hockey Gods are pleased that network TV is broadcasting an outdoor game in a lovely sky lake setting near the Nevada-California at the southern edge of Lake Tahoe.

The hockey purists lap up this stuff. But how will an outdoor hockey game being played in temperatures in the 30s between the Vegas Golden Knights and Colorado Avalanche on Saturday and the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday go over with non-hockey fans?

The NHL’s content marketing chief, Steve Mayer, thinks all sports fans will be enticed by these two outdoor games this weekend. Outdoor games are nothing news to the National Hockey League, which have held 30 outdoor regular season games in stadiums.

But a fan-free rink in the middle of the 18th fairway on a golf course on Nevada is a new wrinkle. Anticipate a bump in TV hockey game ratings for these outdoor games, with the Las Vegas market expected to have a healthy share of TVs tuned into the VGK-Avs game today.

Social distanced chairs for scratched players and team staffers. Photo by Nick Cotsonika/NHL.com

But with a big chunk of the country feeling frozen these days, people are probably thinking beaches over snow on the third weekend of February.

It’s a bucolic, romantic setting for outdoor hockey and the Golden Knights players had a wonderful time skating in a just-fabricated ice rink for their practice drills on Friday. Golden Knights face-of-the-franchise/goaltender-who-was-not-traded Marc-Andre Fleury and feisty chatterbox forward Jonathan Marchessault wore mics and offered their usual verbal string of amusing quips.

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Hockey is running into a demographics problem when it comes to mass appeal in the United States.

While the country’s demographics are growing more Black and Latino, the vast majority of NHL players are white in a league with teams run by white owners and managers. The numbers are working against the NHL. And while the league says it’s trying to be more diverse and more in tune to minority and gay communities, many fans see the words as more lip service than anything else.

So while the media and league will offer sentimental words about this weekend of outdoor games, the NHL still faces a stern business challenge of make its sport appealing and accessible to people of color.

Colorado Avalanche players warm up before Saturday’s 12 noon outdoor game with the Vegas Golden Knights. Photo by Nick Cotsonika/NHL.com

NBC will be running a segment on Golden Knights forward Ryan Reaves, one of about 40 black players in the NHL, during one of the two intermissions during today’s national broadcast. You might recall Reaves was a leader in the decision by players to not play for two days in late August amid racial injustice protests that created tension between the Knights and police in Las Vegas over protests.