The NHL revealed a surprising location for next year’s Winter Classic.
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After the 2023 edition of the Winter Classic took place in Boston on Monday at historic Fenway Park, the NHL officially announced the location for the annual outdoor event in ’24.
The Kraken will host the 2024 Winter Classic at T-Mobile Park, home of MLB’s Mariners, and will face the Golden Knights on New Year’s Day.
The Seattle franchise is only in its second year of play in the NHL, and beat out several other cities for the chance to host the annual event.
“We’re pretty excited,” Kraken CEO Tod Lewieke said via the official release from the NHL. “I think in some regards these things we hoped would happen, these are the things we dreamed would happen. But it’s a great honor that in our third season, we’re going to host, really, an international event. This is a big deal. Every other team thinks about this kind of event and every other team wants to host these events. We had to make our case. The city is great at big events. But it did fundamentally require a partnership between the Mariners, beautiful T-Mobile and the whole organization.”
Seattle will be the first team from the NHL’s Pacific Division to host the Winter Classic, as the event has never been played west of the Central time zone. T-Mobile Park will be the 14th venue and eighth different MLB park to host the event since its inception in the 2008 season.