Stadium Series at MetLife to have park theme this weekend

It will not be a walk in the park when the NHL plays back-to-back outdoor games this weekend in East Rutherford, New Jersey, but it will look like it.

The NHL will transform MetLife Stadium into “NHL Stadium Series Park.”

Grass will surround the ice. There will be plants, paths, park benches, picnic tables and more. People will jog, ride bikes, push strollers and walk dogs when the New Jersey Devils host the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, TVAS-D, SN1) and the New York Islanders host the New York Rangers on Sunday (3 p.m. ET; ABC, ESPN+, SN, TVAS).

Kids will play on NHL STREET rinks decorated by local artists representing the four teams, showcasing the NHL street hockey program. The rinks will be complete with chain-link fences and metal bleachers.

The Jonas Brothers will hold a pregame concert at 6:30 p.m. ET Saturday in what will appear to be an amphitheater, giving ticket buyers a 2-for-1 deal. They’ll also perform during the second intermission Saturday. The indie pop band AJR will perform during the first intermission Sunday.

“If you talk to anybody who grew up in New Jersey, they’ll tell you the town they grew up in and the park they spent their childhood at,” said NHL chief content officer Steve Mayer, who grew up in Union, New Jersey, a little more than 20 minutes south of the stadium. “That’s pretty commonplace around these parts.”

This will be anything but commonplace.

The 2024 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series will feature the League’s 40th and 41st outdoor games, but each event is unique. This will be the first NHL outdoor event in New Jersey and the first with games on back-to-back days in the same venue with fans in attendance.

The League always tailors the field design to the market, a creative process that takes months. This event presented particular challenges and opportunities. How do you celebrate New Jersey while acknowledging three other nearby teams? How do you make the two games feel different in the same venue with a quick turnaround? How can you use the platform to grow the game?

New Jersey is the Garden State. Street hockey there is as natural as pond hockey elsewhere. Same goes for New York and Philly.

“Every one of those cities can relate,” said Paul Conway, NHL group vice president, creative services, who grew up playing street hockey at Astoria Park in New York. “We played with a hockey stick and a crushed can.”

And so, the NHL leaned into the park theme.

For outdoor games in some places, the League has put synthetic snow on top of real grass; at MetLife Stadium this week, it had to remove real snow from synthetic grass. Instead of miniature frozen ponds, it will have the NHL STREET rinks. There will be four paths in the park, each representing one of the teams with a sign displaying the distance to its home arena.

“The idea is that we’re celebrating outdoor hockey, not just outdoor ice hockey, and highlighting all the different environments in which hockey thrives,” said Greg Mueller, NHL vice president, creative services, who grew up playing street and roller hockey at school and in his neighborhood in West Hartford, Connecticut. “Whether it be urban or suburban, it’s something that is certainly applicable to New Jersey, but it applies to all the surrounding areas.”

MetLife Stadium is the home of the NFL’s New York Jets and New York Giants, but the field is being widened to accommodate the FIFA World Cup 26 soccer tournament -- one side this offseason, one side next offseason. To disguise the construction, the NHL will use huge graphics of pine trees to mimic the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

The NHL usually uses huge graphics with logos and wordmarks. But this time, it will use LED screens in key locations, making it easier to switch the look from Saturday to Sunday. The screens also will change throughout each game and serve as production elements for TV, animating after goals, highlighting players and more.

The NHL STREET rinks will be a highlight, from the art to the action.

“We thought it was a unique opportunity, but we wanted to be authentic,” Conway said. “The suggestion was, ‘Can we go look at street artists from each of the four cities for an authentic approach and interpretation of each city?’”

The creative team contacted Jeff Scott, NHL vice president, community development and industry growth, who was previously the Devils’ VP of community investment and grassroots. Scott works on NHL STREET and had worked with local artists in his role with the Devils.

MustArt created the Devils design and helped line up Esteme for the Flyers, Minus 1 for the Islanders and Dek for the Rangers. Each design also was made into an 8-by-8-foot canvas to be used during the team arrivals.

More than 500 kids are expected to participate in a game or skills contest during a free NHL STREET experience at American Dream Mall in East Rutherford on Saturday and Sunday, including youth hockey community groups that will play on the NHL STREET rinks before the games and during the intermissions at MetLife Stadium.

NHL STREET was launched last February as a premier ball hockey experience for kids 6 to 16. Scott said the program has 60 operators across the United States. The goal is to double that by the end of next year.

“In the next eight to 10 years,” Scott said, “we want to be able to say we have more than 100,000 youth playing street hockey.”

More than 130,000 people will see an example at NHL Stadium Series Park this weekend, with millions more watching on TV. The goal is to celebrate, and perpetuate, the game in all its forms.

“You can play wherever you are, whether it be in in the street, whether it be in a park, whether it be in your driveway, whether it be in your school gymnasium,” Scott said. “We’re just opening up the minds of our fans and those people watching to be able to see this as just another way to engage broader communities.

“We want to create a fun and competitive environment where kids feel like they’re part of the game.”