Stadium Series preparation, build underway for Blue Jackets, Red Wings 

COLUMBUS -- Eighteen degrees with a wind chill of eight are not optimum conditions, but for workers at Ohio Stadium on Tuesday the weather was a reminder that something special is afoot.

They were laying the floor decking over the field of college football's reigning national champions, the Ohio State Buckeyes, preparing for the 2025 Navy Federal Credit Union NHL Stadium Series between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings on March 1 (6 p.m. ET; ESPN, TVAS-D, FX-CA).

"The next few days, until Friday, we'll be kind of putting all the piping together, putting down the floor, putting down the dash of boards," NHL senior director, facilities operations Derek King said. "The glass will go in, then we'll start making ice Friday night. That's kind of a seven-day build for us, and we'd like to be ahead of schedule. Practice day for the teams (March 28) is practice day for us, so really, it's paying attention to those finer details."

The mobile refrigeration units arrived in Columbus on Monday and are parked on the east side of the stadium. While the media toured the operation, a forklift was unloading crates of coolant that will be used to get the ice in prime playing condition.

Mike Craig, who holds the same title as King, gave the ideal conditions for the game.

"If we could [get] a lot of cloud cover throughout the day and sitting at about 32 degrees, it's great for us," Craig said. "We can control whatever we need to out there. It's very comfortable for the fans that come and just make it a great experience."

The weather may cooperate. The Weather Channel forecast for March 1 is a high of 39 degrees with a 24 percent chance of rain. Sunset is 6:23 p.m. ET, so the temperature will be dropping. Columbus reached a high of 46 on March 1, 2024, three degrees below the average for the day. In the past 24 years, March 1 has been above 50 degrees 46 percent of the time.

Key days in the ice preparation will be Feb. 24 and 25.

"We'll paint the floor white," King said. "All the hockey markings, lines and logos will go in on the 25th and then we get ready for the 27th and 28th for the first skate."

Very little surprises King and Craig, veterans of NHL outdoor games.

"We've seen a lot over the last few years, so really, we just kind of wake up in the morning and we see what Mother Nature has for us," King said. "So when we're building ice, if we have sun during the day, we'll obviously cover the sheet, and we've got a lot of other things that we can work on during the day. And then once the sun's off the field, we'll uncover it and build overnight.

"If we do get rain, we'll freeze the rain that we can freeze. That kind of helps us to build ice. If it snows, we'll remove the snow, and we just adapt with what we get."

Craig loves that each venue he's worked has its own character.

"It’s little bit different here, just as far as the access to the field, but what's different, obviously, is the volume of seats," he said. "What doesn't get old with these events is being a part of something unique like this and being just in front of all these many people and getting to be a part of that. It's pretty awe inspiring when you come in here, right?"