NHL considers Las Vegas as site for future outdoor games

Long before the recent, rousing success of the National Hockey League's outdoor Winter Classic, the Las Vegas Strip was the site of an NHL outdoor game.

On an 85-degree day in September 1991, the New York Rangers and Los Angeles Kings played an exhibition in front of 13,000 fans and a swarm of insects on a temporary rink at Caesar's Palace.

Partly due to the success of that event, and also because of the city's iconic status, the NHL is considering Las Vegas for future outdoor games.

"In the future, there might be a possibility to go to Las Vegas," said Bernadette Mansur, the NHL's senior vice president of communications. "It's a great city and a great venue. But we are considering many different sites."

NHL Chief Operating Officer John Collins and other league officials visited Las Vegas last week, in part, to explore the possibility of moving the NHL's annual postseason awards show here from Toronto.

But they also explored the possibility of playing the Winter Classic on the Strip.

"We were talking about all sorts of iconic sites to have an outdoor game, and (Collins) mentioned a couple possibilities, with Las Vegas being one," Mansur said Wednesday in a telephone interview.

Mansur said potential sites for a game in Las Vegas weren't discussed and stressed the city was under "future consideration," intimating it had little chance of hosting next year's game.

She also hinted Las Vegas still has awhile to wait for its chance to land an NHL franchise.

"There are people who have expressed interest in putting an NHL team in Las Vegas," she said. "We are not expanding, and we are not moving teams, but it's nice to have interest."

Several NHL cities, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis, Montreal and Toronto, have expressed interest in hosting an outdoor game.

Mansur said the NHL has invested in a state-of-the-art refrigeration unit, which can make ice and control its temperature, allowing the league to play just about anywhere.

The inaugural Winter Classic was played Jan. 1, 2008, in a snowstorm at Buffalo's Ralph Wilson Stadium, and this year's game -- played Jan. 1 between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks at Chicago's Wrigley Field -- drew the largest American TV audience for an NHL regular-season game in 34 years.

Mansur said the new Yankee Stadium was considered as a site for this year's game, which would've featured the Rangers, but construction wasn't completed.

Yankee Stadium remains a potential site for the 2010 game, along with Boston's Fenway Park, but Mansur said "nobody has an inside track" and no decision has been made on future sites.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0354.