Ryan Smith has lofty plans for the NHL’s next Winter Classic

The NHL’s 2027 Winter Classic will actually be played in 2026 — just barely.

On Friday evening in a joint press conference ahead of Game 3 of the Utah Mammoth’s first-round Stanley Cup playoff series against the Vegas Golden Knights at the Delta Center league commissioner Gary Bettman and Mammoth owner Ryan Smith announced that the outdoor game will be played in the late afternoon/early evening on December 31.

In January, Bettman and Smith announced that Utah would be getting the Winter Classic — an outdoor game to be played at Rice-Eccles Stadium on the campus of the University of Utah — and that the Mammoth would face the mighty Colorado Avalanche in it, but a date for the contest was not announced at that time.

“Some of it’ll be under the lights, and we think it’ll be very cool,” Bettman said Friday.

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Added Smith: “December 31st is an awesome day to be able to do this. It’s also awesome because it’s Thursday afternoon, night and it’s New Year’s Eve, and so we have a lot planned.”

In January’s announcement, Smith said the Winter Classic would be part of a days long celebration in Salt Lake City, and he reiterated that notion on Friday.

He gave a reminder that there will be “a pretty special” concert at the Delta Center that night (details of that have not yet been announced), and that there will be other activities in conjunction with the Classic.

“Our hope is that this is a whole weekend, that this is a version of like an All-Star Game where we come in and we can program and activate our state and show our state off,” Smith said.

“So people come in, they ski, they do it all all weekend, so you can expect a weekend of full programming of events — sports, concerts, activities that will be pretty special, and we’re blown away to be able to kick it off with the Winter Classic."

The Winter Classic was started in 2008 and provides a chance for an NHL game to be played outside in a bigger venue — such as a football or baseball stadium — than NHL arenas are.

With the Mammoth as the NHL’s newest team — and one that is already thriving just two years into its Utah existence under Smith’s ownership — it made sense for the league to schedule a Winter Classic sooner rather than later in the Beehive State.

“Everything they’ve done — and you’ve heard me say this repeatedly — has exceeded our highest expectations,” Bettman said Friday of Ryan and Ashley Smith’s ownership of the Mammoth.

“If you want to know how to write a textbook on how to start a franchise in a community from scratch, nobody better than what Ryan and Ashley have been able to accomplish.”